Citi India expands equities team with several new hires

Mumbai, Feb 22 (ANI/Business Wire India): In a move highlighting the continued investment in its equities platform in India, Citigroup Global Markets India has announced a number of ignificant hires across its equities sales and execution business over the past few months.

According to Nikhil Nagle, head of equities for Citi India, these appointments further underline Citi's commitment to its clients in India.

"We remain committed to our clients in continuing to invest in our market leading Indian equities franchise across both the primary and secondary markets. To this end Citi has made a number of significant hires across the sales and execution platforms in recent months. These hires have further strengthened Citi's presence in the Indian equities market to over 25 highly talented and motivated individuals," said Nikhil Nagle, Managing Director and Head of Equities, India.

"India is a high priority market for the Asia Pacific region and with these new appointments, Citi is confident of continuing to be amongst the leading Equities franchise in India supporting our clients' needs across the market," added Nikhil Nagle.

The combined experience of the newly expanded talent pool is over 100 years in equity markets, which include hires across sales, trading and execution. Some of the key new talent who have joined the Citi India team, reporting to Nikhil Nagle includes:

Keshav Sanghi joined as the MD and Deputy Head of Equities, India. Prior to joining Citi, Keshav served as the CEO of Reliance Equities and as Head of Equities at Deutsche. He has over 15 years of experience in Indian Equity sales. In his new role, he will develop long-standing relationships with a majority of Citi's key clients.

Richard Macfarlane joined as MD and Head of Execution Services, India with a focus to strengthen the Indian equities franchise, especially with Citi's offshore clients. He brings with him over 20 years of experience across Pan Asian and European markets and has the additional responsibility of overseeing the growth of Citi's electronic trading platform in the Indian market. He was earlier the Head of AP Sales Trading for UBS and then the Head of European Sales Trading for UBS.

Vandana Luthra as MD, India Equity Sales, brings over 15 years of diversified equity research experience across FMCG, real estate and the metals sectors. Her earlier research assignment with Merrill Lynch across these sectors will add considerable value in strengthening and developing the Citi Equity Sales franchise especially with leading offshore accounts where she shares long standing relationships as a highly rated analyst.

Chandra Sekaran as Director, Equity Sales Trading, brings over 18 years of sales trading experience in Indian markets, across various organizations like Reliance Equities, Kotak, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank. His experience as a buy side trader with Franklin Templeton will provide additional value to Citi equity sales trading desk.

Abhijit Attavar as Director, India Trading brings considerable value and experience to the India trading desk. Abhijit was earlier the Head of Small-Mid cap research at ABN Amro and has over 15 years of experience in research across markets in the region.

Andrew Sutcliffe, Director, Equity Sales Trading, has a total of over 13 years experience in equities with the last three years being in institutional sales trading at Nomura.

Abhinav Khanna, Director, Equity Sales joined from Macquarie and comes with eight years of experience in Indian equities, with the last three years in equity sales in Macquarie.

Suveer Chainani, Director, Equity Sales joined from Macquarie after four years with its Indian equities team after a stint in sales with IBM.

Vaibhav Shintre, Execution Trader joined after graduating from IIM Ahmedabad in 2009. Vaibhav had interned with Citi in Hong Kong last year and will be a key driver of our effort to revamp the execution role.

Asia Pacific head of equities Adrian Faure added that "India remains a high priority market for the Asia Pacific region and with these new additions we are confident that Citi will be able to build further on its leading position in the Indian equities market."

Citi Global Markets equity franchise in India is widely recognised as one of the leaders in the market, picking up India Best Equity House from Euromoney (2008) and IFR Asia (2005-2007) respectively.

Citi was also named Best Foreign Investment Bank in India by Finance Asia and The Asset this year. Citi is a leading underwriter of Indian equities, having led key IPOs and other quity offerings during 2009 that helped raise over five billion dollars for Indian issuers. (ANI)