Lehman's Nalin Nayyar joins Citi

Even as global banks Citi and Lehman plan job cuts internationally, they continue to hire in the country. Globally, most investment banks have frozen recruitment; some have even started retrenching people. But in spite of the problems it faces globally, Citi made a senior-level hire in the investment banking space on Wednesday snapping up Nalin Nayyar, MD-investment banking from Lehman Brothers India. Mr Nayyar’s move comes even as Lehman Brothers is looking at making senior hires in India.

This is also the first senior-level movement in the industry in recent months. The move has caught the industry by surprise as most banks have put a freeze on recruitment. Citi has lost a few senior officials. These include Anil Gudibande who has left the firm to join AIG private equity, Ashish Pitale, director, Citigroup Global Markets is joining Deutsche Bank.

It also lost Ratnesh Kumar, MD and head of research and Rajesh Mayani, director, institutional equity sales to Anand Rathi. Mr Nayyar had joined the Indian franchise of Lehman from its London office. He was earlier in Citi.

For Lehman, this was the second senior official which had quit the firm in recent months after Jayanta Banerjee who had joined the firm from ICICI Ventures as head of private equity moved back to ICICI Ventures. The firm is also said to be looking at retrenching 5-10% of its global workforce. Although there have been rumours that Lehman may retrench people in India its officials have vehemently refuted such rumours.

“We are adding people in all areas. We are looking to strengthen investment banking, real estate and equities and fixed income. India has been an outperforming business. Its a young business. The firm has been focused on building the Asian franchise and in particular India.” said Tarun Jotwani, chairman and CEO, Lehman Brothers India.

The firm now has 172 people on board now as against 146 last year. Incidentally among the newer firms which had started operations in India, Lehman is the only firm who have lost senior officials. Adds Mr Jotwani,“The Indian business has performed way beyond our expectation in revenue terms.

Last year we achieved our budget which we were supposed to achieve in year four or five. We performed five times our budget. Four months into this year, we have exceeded our yearly budget. We had monetised some of our private investments last year. We did a few in December and January and are in the process of monetising a few more over the next few months.”

With the markets in a turmoil both financing and IPO activities have been low for the past couple of months which have affected a lot of firms. “There is very little financing activity but we do have an advisory pipeline. With the revaluation of the markets we are seeing an opportunity in private equity, infrastsructure financing and real estate,” he added.

In equity brokerage, in the secondary market, with the acquisition of Brics we have been increasing our volumes and market share even in an environment where overall market activity is lower,” he added. Lehman’s balance sheet size in India is more than $2 billion.