Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Citigroup at top of league tables

Citigroup seems to have ended up as the top equity and bond underwriter for the year 2004. Interestingly, banks with a commercial franchise like Citigroup and JPMorgan seem to have gained over purely investment banking firms like Goldman Sachs or CSFB. JPMorgan arranged the maximum US mergers while Citi seems to become the top junk-bond underwriter displacing csfb from the top spot after 11 years.
Article in yahoo finance: Citigroup is top underwriter for 2004

I had studied JPM while doing a project on its merger with BankOne in the MACR course - BankOne's CEO Jamie Dimon (who will shortly become the ceo of JPM) was once Sam Weill's protege and was tipped to become CEO after him. Instead in the battle for the top spot he lost out to Chuck Prince (the present CEO of Citi). So he joined BankOne and turned it around. Now having merged it with JPM he gets to head the second biggest bank after Citi in the US. Interestingly, his progress mirrors the career of Sam Weill himself - once tipped to become top man at citibank, he was outsted in the leadership battle; he then went on to head Travellers - which he turned around and then he merged it with citibank forming Citigroup - subsequently going on to head the combined entity.

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