Morning Coffee: A Goldman Sachs partner London partner "retired" and look who hired him. Andy Sieg cut headcount by 20% at Citi wealth

If you thought that Nirubhan Pathmanabhan, Goldman Sachs' co-head of global rates trading and a partner at the firm since 2011, would be collecting stamps and wearing slip-ons when he retired in January 2025, you were wrong. Maybe there was a bit of this, but 17 months later Pathmanabhan - seemingly aged in his late 40s - is back. Not at Goldman.

💥Follow us on WhatsApp for news alerts.💥

Like many who have gone before, Pathmanabhan has joined Citadel Securities. Bloomberg reported last night (on the terminal) that Pathmanabhan will start in June and will lead Citadel Securities' business in EMEA. The news is already creating a sensation on London trading desks, mostly because Pathmanabhan is the latest - and most senior - of a series of similar hires by Citadel Securities from Goldman Sachs.

These other hires are well documented, but include Nikhil Choraria, the head of Goldman's European rates desk, who disappeared from Goldman in February and revealed he was joining Citadel Securities in March. Both Choraria and Pathmanabhan are reporting directly to Peng Zhao, Citadel's CEO. Citadel Securities has also hired Keith Cynar, Nohshad Shah and Frank Flight from Goldman for its rates business, as well as former Goldman luminaries like Jim Esposito for its president.  

Pathmanabhan's arrival is causing a stir. "They are essentially rebuilding Goldman," observes a senior macro trader at a rival bank. Goldman's own rates trading business didn't do well in the first quarter. Maybe it needs to hire its people back from Citadel Securities sometime soon.

Separately, alongside yesterday's revelations about the new corner shop mentality and dearth of managing directors in the investment bank, Citi's investor day revealed that Andy Sieg has cut 20% of staff from Citi's wealth management business. 

Sieg, who is known for being "hard-driving" among other things, made a presentation yesterday saying that around 20% of headcount in the business has gone after he "right-sized" the expense base. When he arrived at Citi in September 2023, 104% of revenues in Citi's wealth business were consumed by costs. Now, just 84% are. Citi's wealth business still only generates a return on tangible common equity of 11%, though. At Morgan Stanley's wealth business, the comparable return in Q1 was 52%. 

Meanwhile...

Citi is making up for its 100 banker gap with rivals and hired Vlad Ivanov from JPMorgan as co-head of EMEA infrastructure banking. (Bloomberg) 

Citi wants $700m of prime balances. In 2022 it only had $200m. (Bloomberg) 

Citadel Securities was using BofA to clear its options trades. Now it's doing it itself and saying: "“The expansion of our robust self-clearing capabilities was a natural progression as we continued to scale our options business and deliver for clients.” Bank of America was clearing 100% of Citadel Securities' flow at times and there were risks for the bank. (Bloomberg) 

Simon Wright, the head of Macquarie's trading arm was paid $25m. (FT) 

Chirayu Rana has hired an attorney who has represented Jeffrey Epstein's accusers. (NYPost) 

Brazilian hedge fund SPX Capital is closing its London office. (Bloomberg) 

Apollo's Mark Rowan had a rant about private credit. “Private credit is just credit. You underwrite it well and it performs, if you underwrite it poorly and doesn’t.” He also declaimed the practice of funds buying secondhand private equity stakes and marking them up to par value on day one. (FT) 

JPMorgan, BlackRock and others want crypto talent. But they also need tradfi experience. “This combination is still relatively small with candidates being strong in one area, but less experienced in the other.”  (Bloomberg) 

CS Venkatakrishnan at Barclays, Christian Sewing at Deutsche Bank and Sergio Ermotti at UBS all hope that European clients might use European banks now that the US is out of favour. (FT) 

IMC is building a big team in India, which is its fourth largest office. An entry-level campus hire there could be paid between about $160k to $265k annually, versus $300k to $450k in New York. (Bloomberg) 

Fidelity is dismissing 800 people and making way 'for early career, hands-on engineering roles' while and streamlining its senior leadership ranks. (Bloomberg) 

It's been very laid back at the Milken Conference this year. “No one in Europe has this level of optimism. There is enthusiasm based on the greater adoption of AI and positivity about the economy. In Europe, the tone is at best cautious optimism or healthy scepticism.” (Financial Times) 

Follow me on X. Follow me on LinkedIn. 

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, Whatsapp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Signal: sarahbutcher.22  Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. 

Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: comments are moderated intermittently by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You must take sole responsibility for comments you post on this site. We will take reasonable steps to weed out anything that we consider to be offensive or inappropriate.