Citigroup Inc. will combine its sales teams that offer foreign-exchange products to corporate chiefs and institutional investors, tapping a 20-year veteran of the firm to take the reins of the newly created division.
(Bloomberg) — Citigroup Inc. will combine its sales teams that offer foreign-exchange products to corporate chiefs and institutional investors, tapping a 20-year veteran of the firm to take the reins of the newly created division.
Sam Hewson, who previously led corporate sales for Citigroup’s markets business across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, was appointed global head of FX sales, according to a memo to staff. He also previously oversaw Citigroup’s digital FX offerings.
“By having a singular sales organization, we can ensure that the coverage, the skill set and the expertise is targeting the needs, activities and behaviors of clients, irrespective of if they happen to be an institutional or corporate client,” Hewson said in an interview.
The move comes just months after Citigroup tapped Flavio Figueiredo to lead the currency-trading division, which has snagged the No. 1 market-share ranking from Coalition Greenwich for 10 straight years. Figueiredo previously led corporate sales and solutions for the trading division.
When Figueiredo was appointed, he was the third leader in 16 months for Citigroup’s FX division. He assumed the role from Leo Arduini, who had been in the position on an interim basis after Stu Staley stepped down from the job in April. Staley himself had only been the sole leader of the business for about eight months, after his former co-head Itay Tuchman departed the Wall Street giant last year.
Under Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser, Citigroup has been focused on enticing more of its corporate clients to use the firm’s FX offerings for hedging and managing their overseas revenue. Already, that corporate franchise makes up about 40% of Citigroup’s footprint within the broader fixed-income trading division, she has said.
“The thing of real beauty for us that is differentiating is the corporate franchise,” Fraser told investors in June. “It’s terrific in the volatile markets as we’ve seen. And that is where we dominate is around FX, hedging and helping clients manage through the volatility for their day-to-day operations and businesses.”
With his role the past two years, Hewson had been part of the work, leading a team that sells FX offerings and derivatives to the firm’s corporate and public-sector clients. With his new position, he’ll also be in charge of selling those products to many of the world’s biggest asset managers.
“The sophistication across the board in terms of how people think about their FX risk, how they quantify their risks, how they deploy strategies and policies to mitigate that risk — it has changed and it has upgraded significantly over the past three to five years,” Hewson said. “The overall risk management and hedging sophistication has improved for all clients.”
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