Is Citi preparing for another hot summer of JPMorgan hires?

Summer is here and for some people, it's bringing flashbacks. This time last year, Citi and JPMorgan were exchanging people. Twelve months later, there are fears that another sweaty hiring summer might be just beginning.

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Some of those fears are at JPMorgan, which last week lost Chuka Umunna to Citi. Umunna departed JPMorgan even though the bank had given him the apparently interesting task of being UK manager of its 'security and resilience initiative' through which it's investing $10bn globally in critical industries.  At Citi, Umunna will be a managing director on the investment banking team instead. 

JPMorgan's apparent perspiration is not just about Umunna, though. Speaking at the bank's investor day earlier this month, Vis Raghavan, the head of Citi's investor bank, said Citi has hired 60 new MDs since the start of 2025, but that it remains afflicted by 100 fewer MDs than rivals.  "We need to continue investing in talent deliberately and strategically," Raghavan declared. "We are targeting a roughly 15% increase in managing director headcount...." Citi can "get" whoever it wants, Raghavan boasted.

Raghavan particularly likes to get people from JPMorgan. He spent nearly 25 years at JPMorgan himself and Citi paid $25m to get him from there in February 2024, plus another $40m to compensate for the stock he left behind. Since arriving at Citi, Raghavan has hired at least 12 former JPMorgan colleagues, many from the JPMorgan equity capital markets business he once ran. They include the likes of Achintya Mangla, Nicolas Skaff, Aloke Gupte, Alex Watkins and Bernal (BJ) Vargas. 

More ECM hires may be on their way. Sources have long suggested that Raghavan also wants to get Ashish Jhajharia, Amanda Sharman, Virginie de Grivel Nigam and Ina De. De Grivel Nigam is head of ECM for the UK and Ireland at JPMorgan. Sharman is an executive director in JPMorgan's ECM execution team. De retired from JPMorgan in February and the suspicion is that she may resurface at Citi soon. 

The flow isn't entirely one way. JPMorgan has also hired a variety of senior people from Citi, many of whom are disaffected with changes ensuring from Raghavan's arrival. 

The battle between the two banks has intensified ever since the Financial Times suggested last month that Raghavan's time at JPMorgan was already coming to an end when Citi announced that it had hired him. Citi contested this and said it had been wooing Raghavan for over a month before the announcement was made. Either way, the two US banks have reason to eye each other warily. - And the market has been heavily speculating as to who at JPMorgan spoke to the FT for its story.  

JPMorgan has aspirations of its own. Earlier this month, it shuffled its investment bank, bringing M&A bankers under its coverage group and making Dorothee Blessing, Kevin Foley and Jared Kaye co-heads of global investment banking. The three are effectively occupying a job that was briefly done by Raghavan, who was co-head of investment banking with Jim Casey for four years before he went. That position had been left empty, until now.  

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