Citi has appointed Chris Laskowski as head of its corporate and investment banking (CIB) business for Hong Kong, filling a hole left by Ed Lam’s move to Li & Fung in October.
Laskowski is a 15-year Citi banker who has been covering Asian clients since 1999. In the new role, he will focus on developing and maintaining relationships with key Hong Kong-based investment banking clients.
Citi’s CIB business also covers local corporates, multinationals and financial institutions, and the Hong Kong heads of those businesses will report into Laskowski.
Susanna Wong heads corporate banking, Ernesto Pittaluga leads the global subsidiaries group (multinationals) and Joy Cheng runs the financial institutions business. They will also maintain their existing regional reporting lines.
Laskowski will also continue to head the Asia-Pacific alternative assets group and support Farhan Faruqui as chief operating officer of CIB for Asia-Pacific.
He inherits the business after Citi reported strong earnings for the first three months of the year.
“The banking business was up nicely in the first quarter,” says Laskowski. “The debt franchise has been supporting a lacklustre equities market and, while M&A is off, it could start to pick up with quantitative easing out of Japan and a general improvement in corporate sentiment. I feel pretty good about the balance of the year.”
It also helps that the US banking industry is recovering. Earnings across the sector, announced last week, showed that the US is once again the most profitable market worldwide — mostly thanks to strong fixed-income flows and reduced costs.
“Having a strong base in the US keeps us in the flow,” says Laskowski. “Financings requiring global distribution and cross border M&A trades are where we can really add value to our clients.”
With Europe still mired in self-inflicted austerity, regional banks such as CIMB are now providing stronger competition to the big US banks in Asia.
He will continue to report directly to Faruqui, and will also report to Weber Lo, who took over from Shengman Zhang as country officer and chief executive for Hong Kong and Macau on January 1, and Brad Coleman, head of the alternative assets group.
Laskowski’s predecessor is now chief financial officer at Li & Fung, which is struggling to return to profitability after an aggressive acquisition strategy. Standard & Poor's yesterday downgraded the company’s credit rating to BBB+ from A-.
