Goldman Sachs seduced a remaining key DCM banker at Citi

It’s not just HSBC that has issues with its debt capital markets (DCM) bankers, Citi has lost quite a few of them too. In some cases, this has been intentional. In others, not.

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Citi’s latest unintentional exit is Tommaso Ponsele, its head of European corporate DCM. Goldman Sachs has hired Ponsele as a managing director in its capital solutions group, focused on European investment grade corporate DCM. He seems to be a replacement for Trent Wilkins, the firm’s former co-head of EMEA corporate origination who moved internally to become co-head of EMEA real estate M&A in April. 

Citi declined to comment. Ponsele is the latest in a series of recent disappearances from Citi’s DCM team that include Iman Abdel Khalek, the EMEA head of DCM, Zain Zaidi the head of UK, Europe and MEA loans products, Divyen Patel, a director on the European DCM syndicate desk, and various others. 

Ponsele was promoted as head of European corporate DCM last October, when Colm Rainy, his former co-head, was unexpectedly made redundant. 

 If Citi wanted to discourage Ponsele from embarking for Goldman Sachs, it would have needed to pay him handsomely to stay. “If he leaves, it wouldn’t look good for Paul Gibbs (Citi’s UK, Europe and MEA head of financing), suggested one insider yesterday.  

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