Citi's London energy & power team keeps leaking people. JPMorgan may hire them
Banks' enthusiasm for adding new bankers remains tepid at best in 2025, but hiring is still happening. And it risks drawing on a team which has seen more than its fair share of departures.
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Cit insiders say the bank's European power and energy, which has long been one of its strongest, has sprung a leak. At least 15 bankers at various levels have left in the past two years, with several disappearing in late 2024 before bonuses were announced.
Citi isn't commenting. Insiders at the bank say the energy and power team came off relatively unscathed from the Bora Bora cuts of 2023 and early 2024, but that departures have gathered pace ever since.
They include Charles Hop De Chillaz, a managing director, who's understood to be joining JPMorgan, along with senior vice presidents (VPs) like Oswaldo Paradelo, who's also thought to have quit recently for destinations unknown. An array of juniors has also gone, including Amelia Puyo, Jorge Arboli, James Wilson, Arjun Krishna, Laurence Hora, Cecilia Chisa, Eriketi Mytilineou, Fatima Zahidi, Henri Badoux and Adham Elbadrawy. Others, like Shreyas Bordia, the former head of EMEA energy investment banking, left in late 2023 for reasons that weren't entirely clear at the time.
It's not unusual for junior bankers to leave, but the exits from Citi's European power team have been particularly plentiful. Sources at the bank suggest that Philip ten Bosch, the London-based co-head of global power banking, can be "Marmite" to work with. There are gripes, too, that Citi veteran Pablo Escondrillas, who now runs the power and energy investments team, is a power rather than an energy banker by trade.
The departures don't appear to have impacted Citi's standing for energy and natural resources banking globally: it ranked second last year, up from fourth in both 2023 and 2022.
There's a risk, however, that the exits might now gather pace. Financial News reported yesterday that JPMorgan hired Francisco Abularach, Citi's former London-based global co-head of infrastructure banking, as its head of infrastructure for Europe. Abularach was at Citi for 27 years and worked on deals across the utilities, energy, transportation and telecoms space before leaving for Antin Infrastructure Partners in 2021. His sudden arrival at JPMorgan might explain Hop De Chilla's migration there from Citi too. Other ex-colleagues may well be inclined to follow.
Photo by American Public Power Association on Unsplash
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