It's Friday. Well done Wall Streeters, you made it to the end of the… day before you open your laptops to work on Saturday.
I'm your host, Aaron Weinman. To lighten things up, I'm rolling out Insider's first "Banker of the Week" segment. The BoW highlights rainmakers, significant new hires, or someone taking on meaningful initiatives at their firms.
Got an idea on who should be next week's banker? You can email me at [email protected] or tweet me @aaronw11.
By the way, get your earbuds ready: I'm on this morning's The Refresh from Insider talking SPACs – listen to my segment here and check out the full episode here.
Now, let's get to it.
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1. Our inaugural BoW: Harold Butler, who leads Citi's diverse financial institutions group. After 17 years at Citi, he's known for his links to the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve.
Butler — a huge advocate for greater equity on Wall Street — was tasked with leading Citi's newly-formed diverse financial institutions group in February. The team aims to expand Citi's capital-markets activity with minority-owned broker dealers and asset managers, and it oversees the bank's investments in minority-owned depository institutions (MDIs).
A couple of years before being asked to lead this team, however, Butler sowed the seeds for a rotational program designed to cultivate links between Citi and more MDIs. In the summer of 2020, while having dinner with Kase Lawal, chairman at Unity Bank in Texas, the Lone Star state's sole Black-owned bank, Butler was asked whether Citi would consider a grant to help Unity get a new markets tax-credit business.
Butler thought on it and realized a rotational program not only strengthened relationships with MDIs, but provided minority-owned financial institutions with access to Wall Street talent, services, and technology.
The rotational initiative, like a secondment, embeds Citi bankers with MDIs for a short term.
Thanks in part to Butler, Citi started the rotational program last year. Its initial secondee was Gina Nisbeth, a director in Citi's trading division, who spent last year working with Unity National Bank of Houston.
And last month, Citi named three secondees for the second installment of rotations:
- Sandy Furlow is doing a year-long assignment with African-American-owned Industrial Bank.
- Abhijit Bhattacharya is providing advisory services to Optus Bank.
- Valerie Scruggs joined M&F Bank, where she will work in advisory services.
Meet seven other Wall Street bankers plying their trade at minority-owned institutions.
2. Citadel Securities is hiring 25% more interns than the last two years. The fund/market maker's class of minions feature some sharp individuals, including students who've won the Putnam math competition, NASA researchers, and special-ops soldiers.
3. Despite Citadel's hiring chops, not all of it seems squeaky clean. A former analyst at the firm was sentenced to prison time for scamming millions of dollars in Covid relief loans, according to Bloomberg.
4. Sotheby's is going head-to-head with private banks on lending. Here's how the auction house is providing loans against luxury purchases like Patek Philippe watches.
5. Federal Prosecutors opened a criminal inquiry into Wells Fargo's hiring practices, according to the New York Times. The inquiry comes after Wells paused a policy that an ex-staffer said led to "fake" job interviews.
6. Franchise Group is eyeing more than $2 billion to support its $8 billion deal for retailer Kohl's. The store operator is turning to Apollo Global Management for the money, people told the New York Post.
7. Staying on Apollo, the investing giant is teaming up with Indian conglomerate Reliance. The pair have made a binding offer for UK-based drug store Walgreens Boots, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.
8. Apple will not use Goldman Sachs' balance sheet to issue loans for its new Apple Pay Later service. The tech giant will instead make the short-term loans through a wholly-owned subsidiary called Apple Financing LLC.
9. Blockchain.com's CEO said an embattled crypto market feels like "normal." Here's the latest from Money20/20 Europe.
10. A former Capital One exec landed $60 million for this fintech. Here's 23 slides on how Tandym, a startup that's reinventing store credit cards, nabbed funding from investors like Gradient Ventures.
Moves on the Street:
- CIFC Asset Management, an alt-credit specialist with about $4o billion in AUM, has hired Conor Daly as its head of European credit. He previously ran European credit for fellow structured-finance shop Onex Credit.
- General Atlantic led a $90 million funding round in Klar, a fintech platform in Mexico.
Event invite: The fourth installment in Insider's "Financing a Sustainable Future" series is next Tuesday, June 14 at noon Eastern. This event, in partnership with Bank of America, focuses on corporate governance, perhaps the most difficult measure of ESG reporting. Check out the previous three events and register for next week here.
Curated by Aaron Weinman in New York. Tips? Email [email protected] or tweet @aweinman11. Edited by Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London.