Sergio Moraes/Reuters
- Armando Diaz, Citigroup's head of global cash trading, is leaving the firm.
- This was his second stint at Citigroup, whose cash equities business has been making headway in the past year.
Citigroup's head of global cash stock trading is leaving the firm.
Armando Diaz, who was hired in 2016 to revive Citi's moribund global cash trading business, is leaving the company, according to people familiar with the matter.
This was Diaz's second stint at Citi. He ran US institutional cash trading at the firm up until 2011, when he left to join hedge fund Millennium Management. He also spent two decades at Goldman Sachs.
The reason behind Diaz' departure isn't clear. But Citigroup's equities business took market share in the period where Diaz was at the helm of the stock trading business. Over a period where the equities business has suffered on Wall Street, Citi made strides and clawed back market share from competitors, moving past Deutsche Bank in the league tables and closing the gap with Credit Suisse.
The equities departments at other banks fell 4% to 5% on average last year, with cash equities declining 3% to $9.2 billion across Wall Street. Industry sources say Citi's cash equities business, while smaller than competitors at the top of the league tables, actually grew by more than 7% in 2017.
"They did well. I'm surprised at that news to be very honest," one industry consultant told Business Insider. "Citi gained market share when others were down."
Citigroup declined to comment.