By Tatiana Bautzer
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Citigroup hired Drago Rajkovic as its co-head of mergers and acquisitions from rival JPMorgan Chase, according to a memo seen by Reuters on Friday.
Rajkovic, who has more than three decades of advisory experience, was most recently global chairman of M&A at JPMorgan, according to the memo signed by Citi’s head of banking Viswas “Vis” Raghavan, who is also a JPMorgan alum.
Rajkovic will join Citigroup in September and lead M&A alongside Kevin Cox, the memo added. Rajkovic will divide his time between New York and San Francisco.
His recent deals included the $8-billion acquisition of Informatica by Salesforce and the purchase of Juniper Networks by Hewlett Packard Enterprise for $14 billion.
Raghavan has made several senior hires since he joined Citi a year ago, including ex-JPMorgan executive Achintya Mangla, who joined in September as head of financing for the investment bank.
Citi’s investment banking fees surged in the first quarter, fueled by an 84% jump in M&A fees. This year, it advised Charter Communications in its $21.9-billion merger with Cox Communications, and also advised Boeing on the $10.5-billion sale of its Jeppesen flight navigation unit to Thoma Bravo.
“M&A continues to be super active – there’s a lot of dialog, a lot of engagement,” Raghavan told investors this month. “The debt market will be more a function of how the M&A market manifests itself, through acquisition financing.”
(Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Lananh Nguyen and Rod Nickel)
