Jefferies promotes new Citi hire to MD despite lean internal promotions

Jefferies has been promoting VPs to MDs in recent months, but not all of those promotions have come from within. The bank's recent dealmaking managing director (MD) promotion class in Europe was a bit light, and the bank has now hired a director from elsewhere as an MD.

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Arnaud Collas just joined Jefferies as an MD in its EMEA leveraged finance team. He's worked in leveraged finance his entire career, spending the last six and a half years at Citi, joining as a VP in mid-2018 and getting promoted after seven months. He also spent a collective decade across Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas and Nomura.

Collas will work under another external hire, Tim Kerry, who joined from Barclays in late January as co-head of EMEA leveraged finance. Kerry, who was already an MD prior to the move, joins a growing contingent of Barclays bankers who seemingly the British bank left after feeling unappreciated; Jefferies hired the bank's global investment banking chairman John Miller and two other MDs in mid-2023, when Miller was displaced by Cathal Deasey.

Kerry and Collas have arrived at Jefferies amid a spate of MD hiring; The bank hired 360+ MDs externally in the five years ending last October, a 70% increase. However, while Jefferies has been adding MDs externally, dealmaking promotions were light last year, and just five mid-level bankers were promoted at the bank in December across EMEA. Oliver Berwin, now EMEA head of equity syndicate, was the only one of those five to join Jefferies as an analyst, while Dubai-based Georges Haddad had only been at the firm for seven months before the promotion.

Jefferies is trying to improve its relationship with analysts and associates in the wake of Carter McIntosh's untimely death, with CEO Richard Handler referring to them as his "extended family." 

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