Citi named CEO Jane Fraser’s chief of staff, Margo Pilic, to a new role as head of strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and investor relations, the bank said in a Wednesday release.
That role is a combination of two previous positions: Tim Karpoff had been serving as head of strategy and M&A since 2021. And Jenn Landis has been Citi’s head of investor relations for much the same time frame.
Landis will become CFO of the bank’s markets business, starting in early August.
Karpoff, meanwhile, will leave Citi at the end of this month – a somewhat delayed departure. Karpoff noted in a LinkedIn post Thursday that he told the bank at the beginning of the year that he would be leaving. Citi executives asked Karpoff to stay and “see them through” the bank’s May 7 investor day, he said.
Karpoff – who previously worked as chief of staff, then head of strategy and corporate development at Barclays, according to his LinkedIn profile – plans to formally join the voting-rights nonprofit he helped found and be more present for his family, Citi said in its release.
“Time is the one resource you can’t get more of and as I took a moment to step back and think about how to use that scarce resource (what more would one expect from a strategist…), other opportunities arose,” Karpoff wrote on LinkedIn. He hinted at taking a “new role focusing on the intersection of finance and technology.”
Meanwhile, Fraser tapped Rafael Soeda, previously Citi’s chief operating officer for services, as her next chief of staff, succeeding Pilic.
Soeda joined Citi in 2010 from JPMorgan Chase, where he’d spent 13 years.
Fraser praised him Wednesday for his “deep experience serving clients, executing complex transactions, leading teams and operating businesses.”
Among his “complex transactions,” Soeda is credited with playing a “key leadership role” in Citi’s separation of Banamex.
“His capacity to grasp high-level strategy, rapidly process complex data, and ensure daily priorities align with long-term goals make him the ideal choice” as chief of staff, Fraser said.
Soeda will begin in that role in early August.
In her new role as CFO of markets, Landis will succeed Fran Genesi, who will retire in July, Citi said. Genesi held the markets CFO role in an interim capacity and also served as CFO for global functions, operations and technology. He held several unit CFO roles for Citi in nearly 30 years, including in personal banking and wealth management, at the bank’s legacy Institutional Clients Group, and Asia-Pacific, according to his LinkedIn profile.
As head of investor relations, Landis “reestablished trust and credibility … through transparent communication of the firm’s financial and strategic messaging and rigorous engagement with our analyst and investor community,” Citi said Wednesday.
She is credited with revamping Citi’s earnings processes, disclosures and analytics, and helping the bank’s stock surpass $100 per share for the first time since 2008, the company said.
“We’ve turned a corner at Citi, but there’s still a lot to get done,” Landis wrote in a LinkedIn post Thursday, announcing her move.
Landis joined Citi in 2021 after two decades at JPMorgan Chase, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Pilic, another 20-plus-year veteran of Citi, will report to CFO Gonzalo Luchetti in her new role.
Combining Citi’s strategy and M&A role with investor relations “reflects the increasingly close connection between how we define our strategy and how we deliver to investors,” Luchetti said.
Fraser, meanwhile, praised Pilic for her “incisive judgment and execution drive.”
“For the past five years … Margo has been at the center of all our firm has accomplished,” Fraser said. “She has been a key thought partner for me on our strategy refresh, our reorganization and all the work we have done to transform our firm.”
Pilic will begin in her new role in August, the bank said, adding that it is starting the search for its next CFO for global functions, operations and technology and will shortly be posting the opening for COO of services.
