Citi rings the changes in structured products

Citi has announced a host of changes to its structured products business, including the appointment of Jean-Luc Bernardi as head of structuring for Europe, the Middle East and Asia (EMEA). Bernardi has developed and led the EMEA equity derivatives structuring team since 2006 and will be responsible for combining former equities, hybrids and fixed-income, currencies and commodities structuring into an integrated cross-asset class structuring team. He will report to Stefan Wagner, head of EMEA structured products, and Erwin Parviz, global head of structuring.

The structuring team has been tasked with financial engineering, complex product development and structured solutions. Financial engineering will be responsible for pay-off innovation and pricing across all asset classes, and will be headed by Alessio Matteuzzi, who joined Citi in 2007 as a structurer within the hybrids team.

Complex product development will develop new products, platforms and issuers that require a complex approval processes, detailed interaction with control functions and external entities. This group will be headed by Edward Senior, who has worked at Citi since 1998 in various roles and who has been a structurer within the equity derivatives team since 2003.

Structured solutions will build the asset liability management and macro hedging offerings for institutional and corporate clients. It will also be responsible for developing further the variable annuity business and will be headed by Sean Flanagan, who joined Citi in 2004 as a structurer within the hybrids team.

Matteuzzi, Senior and Flanagan will report to Bernardi.

Further, Al Plattner has been appointed EMEA retail structured product sales head for Europe, reporting to Wagner and Andres Recoder, head of EMEA sales. The EMEA RSP sales team covers equity, fixed income, commodity, foreign exchange, hybrids and credit.

"The upheavals that have taken place in the structured product market over the past year present us with an ideal opportunity to attain leadership in this space and influence the future development of the industry," said the bank in an internal note. "It could not be a better time to finally bring together the diversity of product capabilities available to us in the firm and present a single, coherent value proposition to our clients and prospects."

Michel Planquart will be appointed EMEA head of marketing and syndication for the EMEA RSP group. Planquart has been at Citi for 13 years, and developed and led the structured retail and private client marketing team within European fixed income since 2006.

Planquart will be responsible for: branding, marketing and communications activities for retail products across all asset classes; developing new forms of product distribution, with an initial focus on expanding the non-advisory business into new product lines and markets; and syndicating products across retail and institutional sales channels to leverage the structured product capabilities.

Planquart will report to Wagner, head of EMEA RSP, and Lauren Ash, global head of marketing.