Citigroup said to lose three China bankers to rivals

Citigroup Inc.’s Wu Sheng and Ji Yehong resigned as managing directors at the bank’s China team to join rivals, people with knowledge of the departures said.

Wu will go to Barclays Plc and Ji will join Credit Suisse Group AG, the people said, asking not to be identified because the moves haven’t been made public. The executives reported to Eugene Qian and Rodney Tsang, co-heads of global banking for China. Meng Song, a vice president on the China team, quit to join Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s local investment banking venture, the people said.

Yi and Wu, who joined New York-based Citigroup in 2006 from Morgan Stanley, left two months after the bank promoted Qian and Tsang. Citigroup has been building its China investment banking team over the past four years, increasing the unit’s workforce to almost 50 people, one of the people said.

“Banking is one of the sectors where there does seem to be quite a scramble for people at the moment,” said Brian Renwick, Boyden Global Executive Search’s managing director for China. “There’s a lot of movement taking place.”

James Griffiths, a Citigroup spokesman in Hong Kong, declined to comment on the departures. Josephine Lee, a spokeswoman at Credit Suisse, and Timothy Cuffe at Barclays declined to comment, as did Goldman Sachs spokeswoman Connie Ling.

“Citi has excellent momentum in our China global banking business and continue to add to our China team, adding 10 people since the second half last year from managing directors down,” Griffiths said in an e-mail. Citigroup ranked ninth in arranging overseas share sales by Chinese companies last year, down from No. 3 in 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The bank rose to third from fifth in advising on mergers involving Chinese companies, the data show.