Citi has relocated Abhay Pande from its Wall Street headquarters to Singapore to head Southeast Asia industrials global banking, a newly created role.
Pande is charged with building Citi’s industrials franchise across Asean and India, and has also been appointed co-head for energy global banking in Asia, alongside Jason Johnson, who is currently Asia head of natural resources global banking. The energy global banking group is also newly created.
Pande has dual reporting lines to Michael Borch, who is the Hong Kong-based Asia-Pacific head of industrials global banking, and Stephen Trauber, who is Citi’s Houston-based head of energy banking. He has spent 13 years with Citi and was most recently a managing director in the firm’s energy global banking team in New York.
Citi has been enhancing its focus on the Asean region. Last month it enlarged the mandate of Tracey Woon, who now heads investment banking coverage for Southeast Asia, while retaining her earlier role as global banking head for Singapore. In April, Citi also hired David Khoo from Royal Bank of Scotland as a managing director in the bank’s financial institutions group with a focus on Asean clients.
The US bank has had some success in winning deals in Southeast Asia recently. Last year it was a global coordinator with J.P. Morgan on the S$3.45 billion ($2.8 billion) initial public offering of Global Logistic Properties (GLP), Singapore’s largest initial public offering since 1993. Citi also played a role on the recent IPOs of Cebu Air and Tiger Airways. Last Friday, Citi announced it had advised Rizal Commercial Banking Corp on a $165 million equity fundraising by way of a private placement to private equity firm CVC Capital Partners and IFC, a member of the World Bank group. RCBC is the Philippines’s fourth-largest privately owned bank in terms of capital.
China hire
Citi also hired Kenneth Leung as a managing director in the China investment banking team. Leung joins from Hong Kong-listed Chinese developer KWG Property. Before this, he was an investment banker at Credit Suisse and Merrill Lynch.
He will focus on coverage in the private sector, with a principal emphasis on property and will be based in Hong Kong.
In late March, Citi hired Wei Wei Zhao, also as a managing director in its China investment banking team. Zhao joined from Deutsche Bank where she held a similar role.
According to Dealogic, Citi has helped raise more than $15 billion for Chinese clients from the capital markets in the past year, including billion dollar bonds for CNOOC, CNPC and Sinochem, and leading nine China IPOs.
"We see increased opportunities with our clients in China and this key hire will further increase our capabilities to serve our growing private sector client base," said Farhan Faruqui, head of global banking for Citi in Asia.
