Citigroup Bolsters Investment Banking Ranks With Eye on Cash-Rich Private-Equity Firms
March 21 2018 - 4:26PM
Dow Jones News
By Ben Dummett
Citigroup Inc. has hired a veteran banker of HSBC Holdings PLC
and Deutsche Bank to co-head its coverage of private equity,
sovereign-wealth funds, pension funds and family office clients in
Europe, the Middle East and Africa, in an effort to take advantage
of the record amounts of money this group has to invest.
Based in London, Alexis Maskell will join with Citigroup's Shawn
Borisoff and together the two will oversee the U.S. bank's EMEA
alternative assets group, a spokeswoman confirmed. Mr. Maskell, who
is set to start his new role in June, most recently was global head
of HSBC's investment-banking operations focused on private-equity
firms. Before that he spent 10 years at Deutsche Bank.
He will report to Anthony Diamandakis and Christian Anderson,
global co-head of Citigroup's Global Asset Managers group.
Mr. Maskell's hiring comes at a time when institutional
investors are plowing money into infrastructure funds and
private-equity firms to diversify from public securities and seek
higher returns. Last year, Apollo Global Management LLC raised
$23.5 billion a buyout fund while CVC Capital Partners set a
fundraising record for Europe, attracting 16 billion euros ($19.6
billion). The challenge now is for these and other cash-rich funds
to find new investments, creating advisory opportunities for
investment banks on deals pursued by this group of investors.
At the same time, the client base for investment banks that
focus on buyout firms and other private investors is expanding as
pension funds and family offices- -- investment vehicles set up by
ultrarich investors -- and infrastructure funds increasingly
compete against traditional buyout firms in the acquisition and
sale of assets.
"With the amount of capital that has been raised globally, I
would expect in the next few years for there to be very large
buyouts of public companies or big carve outs of their divisions",
said Mr. Diamandakis. "I would also expect a big focus on portfolio
monetizations at this point in the cycle," as buyout firms take the
advantage of the demand for assets, he said.
Write to Ben Dummett at ben.dummett@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 21, 2018 16:11 ET (20:11 GMT)
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