Citibank (NYSE:C) Hiring in Australia to Rebuild Research Business

During the height of the economic crisis financial institutions like Citibank (NYSE:C) cut back on their staff, especially on the investment research aspect of the business in order to focus on surviving and strengthening their foundations. Now Citibank and others are starting to re-hire in order to refocus on growth segments of their business, now that they believe they’ve secured their base operations.

In that regard Citibank has started to hire strongly in the Australian market to shore up the research sector of the company after getting rid of about a hundred workers last year, which had a negative impact on the company in that region concerning research.

While most see that the cutting last year in bank personnel was the right thing to do in general, when it can to investment banking, in the Australian market especially, it wasn’t a good move because of the boom in that segment of the market in 2009, which put Citibank at a disadvantage there.

The specific research coverage they’re looking at strengthening includes commodity sectors like energy, mining and metals, along with health-care, real estate investment trust and financial service stocks, according to the head of investment research Bruce Rolph.

“It’s no secret that in 2008 Citi embarked on a global restructure,”  Rolph said. “The view was that we would be the first to cut and our competitors would follow in 2009.

“That was the correct strategy for everywhere but Australia, which experienced an investment banking boom. We found ourselves at somewhat of a disadvantage in Australia on research.”

Citibank landed a key recruit just a couple of days ago when they hired Mark Greenwood away from J.P. Morgan, who will become the head and managing director of their energy research unit. That makes ten analysts Citibank has hired over the last several months in the research area.

Before you draw the conclusion this looks like it’s a hiring boom because the economy has turned around though, keep in mind that annual attrition rates are about 10 percent for financial companies, due to those who are fired, deaths, and other factors.

This is related to other sectors than research, but most hiring has been in the area of replenishment at this time and not because of anticipated growth for the large banks.

For Citibank they cut too deeply in their Australian market and are scrambling to replenish their numbers as investment banking continues to be one of the few growth areas in the industry.