Citi's small MD promotion class was particularly rough on technologists
Citi has unveiled its new class of managing directors, and it's a far smaller class than last year's. After a massive 344 were promoted in 2024 (the number is usually closer to 300), the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction this year as just 277 made the cut. Its technology division was one of the most impacted areas of this scale-back.
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In 2024, 27 people in Citi's technology division were promoted to MD. This year, that number almost halved to just 15 names, despite the division's remit being expanded to include business enablement. Eight were based in the US, including three in New York and, curiously, three in Florida. Five were based in the UK and just two were based in India despite Citi's global capacity centre in the country employing ~33,000 employees.
The average new tech MD at Citi spent 14 years working there, but some spent much more time and some spent much less. The freshest face to make MD was Namita Saran, APAC head of core payments and receivables, who spent less than three years working there. She previously spent six years at Barclays, where she was a business banking technology director. The longest tenured new MD, meanwhile, was Viral Patel, head of treasury liquidity reporting and resolution planning technolgy; he spent 29 years at the bank, joining in 1997.
The list curiously seems to include no homegrown technologists, but multiple hires from rival banks. Konstantin Kos, an equities sales and trading technologist, made the list after six years at Citi, but he spent 15 years prior to that at JPMorgan. Multiple new MDs previously worked at Credit Suisse; Prashant Jain and Kevin Peel were hired from the Swiss bank in 2010 and 2020, respectively. Students joining Citi's graduate program have been warned.
Citi's Technology and Business Enablement MDs
Zak Bahri
Business execution head for tech COO, CISO and business architecture.
Tampa, Florida
Katie Fontana
Head of service and product management, Cybersecurity
Dallas, Texas
Rama Gontla
Data warehouse consultant
London, UK
Rajiv Mirjankar
North America head of credit decisioning and unified lending technology
Jacksonville Florida
Konstantin Kos
Equities sales and trading technology
New York, New York
Alina Kamat
Risk lead for technology implementations and automation
London, UK
Daniel Jepp
Head of release automation
London, UK
Prashant Jain
Head of product processors and independent price verification tech
London, UK
Bhagavathi Satchithanantham
Global head of API and open banking engineering, Citi Global Wealth
Chennai, India
Namita Sara
APAC head of core payments and receivables
Pune, India
Kevin Peel
Equity derivates heritage and strategic risk lead
London, UK
Viral Patel
Head of treasury liquidity reporting and resolution planning technology
New York, New York
Elvis Veliz
Global head of offensive security and vulnerability management
Miami, Florida
Shantharam Iyer
New York
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