Citi has made two internal appointments and one external hire for its Asia-Pacific acquisition and loans teams which are part of its capital markets origination (CMO) unit, according to an announcement.
Najeeb Haider will take up a key role as managing director in Citi's acquisition finance team, while Prosenjit Saha has been named as a director of loan syndicate and sales for South Asia covering Thailand, Malaysia and India. Meanwhile, the bank has hired Cecilia Noronha from BNP Paribas as director of loan syndicate and sales for North Asia. All three are based in Hong Kong.
Haider, who was previously responsible for infrastructure and energy finance for Asia-Pacific, will focus on strengthening and building out Citi's acquisition finance platform in Asia. He has been with Citi since 1995 and has more than 19 years of experience in project and corporate finance, along with credit and structuring.
Saha joined Citi in 2000 and has worked in CMO since 2003. He was most recently with the structured products group and has led a number of structured and acquisition financings, high-yield loan syndications and equity-linked transactions. He brings to the syndicate platform 15 years of combined knowledge and experience of debt and equity markets.
Noronha will work with the loans team to expand the loan syndication portfolio covering Korea and China. She has more than 15 years of corporate banking and fund investor coverage experience across loan syndication, relationship management and risk management. At BNP Paribas she was a director in the loan syndication division. She has also worked with a number of other financial institutions, including Bank of America, HSBC and DBS.
All three roles are additions to the existing markets group structure and will report into Benjamin Ng, head of acquisition finance, CMO syndicate and loan sales.
"We continue to see demand from our clients in Asia for innovative financing solutions and these hires underline our commitment to support their ambitions, and to invest in our franchise across our integrated CMO platform," said Ng.
Acquisition finance is one of the fastest growing areas in Citi's global markets business. According to Dealogic figures, as of March 31 the bank's acquisition and loans business raised almost $40 billion for Asia-based clients this year.
