Achintya Mangla's big new job at Citi reflects the great power of Vis Raghavan
As we predicted in May, Achintya Mangla has resurfaced at Citi after leaving JPMorgan. Also as we predicted in May, he's now working with his long term friend/colleague Vis Raghavan, who as head of banking at Citi, is a man with a mandate to get things done.
Raghavan has only been at Citi for three months, and the expectation is that he will hire other JPMorgan people as he becomes established there.
In a measure of Raghavan's influence at Citi, the role Mangla is occupying appears to have been concocted entirely for Mangla, and looks broader in scope than anything Mangla has done before. Starting from today, he will be Citi's, 'head of financing for investment banking,' covering global debt capital markets (DCM) and equity capital markets (ECM), syndicate and private capital markets.
At JPMorgan, Mangla was most recently sole global head of ECM alone. It was a role Mangla held for less than two years after being promoted to sole head from co-head of global ECM with a more European focus in 2022, when Michael Millman, his then-US-based ECM co-head, moved into a chairman role. Mangla and Millman were themselves made co-heads of ECM in 2020, coincidental with Raghavan becoming co-head of investment banking.
Pre-2020, Mangla was co-head of ECM for EMEA at JPMorgan for six years, and co-head of ECM for Asia ex-Japan before that. His DCM experience looks minimal. In 2010, Mangla resigned from JPMorgan to join Bank of America, but had a change of heart.
Mangla's rise at JPMorgan mirrored that of Raghavan, who also cut his teeth in the bank's equity capital markets business. The two men worked at the bank together for over 20 years. In his memo to Citi colleagues, Raghavan says: "Throughout his two decades with J.P. Morgan, Achintya held roles of increasing responsibility across multiple asset classes."
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At Citi, Raghavan says Mangla will be managing the bank's "current" head of global DCM (Rich Zogheb) and co-heads of global ECM, Doug Adams and James Fleming. He'll also be helping to drive the private credit strategy, implying that he'll be working closely with the likes of Mitali Sohoni, Citi's head of asset backed financing. At JPMorgan, it's worth noting that the global head of capital markets, Kevin Foley, has a DCM background.
How do Citi's financing incumbents feel about their new master? The bank has long been a DCM house (Citi's DCM revenues in the first six months of 2024 were $1bn versus just $345m for ECM), and its DCM bankers were already feeling a little unloved. Mangla's arrival also seems to have added a new layer of management after jobs were eradicated during the Bora Bora restructuring.
It may be that Mangla is the perfect fit for his new role. Raghavan says Mangla is, "a proven leader with a track record of building and leading high-performing teams that deliver innovative, globally-minded solutions to clients," and foresees that Mangla will generate, "generate cross-asset class incremental alpha opportunities."
If Citi veterans don't like it, they can always leave, like Tyler Dickson. If they do, there will presumably be other people from JPMorgan who can fill the gaps.
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