Citi hires from rivals to bolster ranks, Canaccord operative tapped to head research

Citi has hired Canaccord Genuity operative Paul Buys to head its Australia and New Zealand research unit. Picture: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP

Investment bank Citi has hired Canaccord Genuity operative Paul Buys to head its Australia and New Zealand research unit.

He replaces Paul McTaggart in the job, who is retiring at the end of the year after a career in sell-side research spanning three decades.

At Canaccord, Mr Buys headed research and had previously been head of Asia Pacific securities research for Credit Suisse.

He will take a managing director title and sit on Citi’s Australia and New Zealand executive committee.

It comes as Citi hires four new operatives for its markets business, and has promoted one staff member.

Christian Ford will join from Jefferies as a director for equities high touch execution.

At Jefferies, he was managing director and head of sales trading.

Also, it has hired Andrew Bruce as head of low touch execution from JPMorgan’s global equities team and Nicholas Lebon as director in its corporate solutions group from Credit Agricole, where he was a director in market sales.

Citi has expanded Dan Smith’s role from working across prime services sales in equities, with his title now being head of Australia, prime finance.

Laura Sutcliffe also recently joined Citi as head of healthcare research.

Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank recently hired UBS executive director Jonathon Platt to head up its infrastructure and utilities coverage across Australia and New Zealand.