Citi’s veteran M&A chief Mark Shafir to retire

By Anirban Sen and Mehnaz Yasmin

(Reuters) – Mark Shafir, one of Citigroup Inc’s top dealmakers, is retiring after a career spanning over three decades during which he advised some of the world’s largest corporations on several landmark deals.

Shafir, who has led Citi’s global mergers and acquisitions unit since joining the bank in 2008, will stay on till mid-May to help with the transition, according to an internal memo sent on Tuesday by Tyler Dickson and Manuel Falco, Citi’s global co-heads of banking, capital Markets and advisory.

Cary Kochman, who has served as co-head of global M&A at Citi alongside Shafir since 2017, will continue to lead the franchise.

“(Mark) has been one of the lead drivers of our M&A business and has played a central role developing the franchise, which grew significantly under his leadership,” Dickson and Falco said in the memo.

Shafir, widely seen as a top Wall Street rainmaker, began his investment banking career at Goldman Sachs in 1985 and went on to hold several leadership roles at other financial institutions including Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers.

Shafir was instrumental in shaping Citi’s M&A franchise during his tenure and advised on several landmark transactions. These include the $38 billion sale of Anadarko to rival Occidental Corp in 2019, the recent $61 billion Broadcom-VMware deal and $25 billion proposed Kroger-Albertsons merger.

Wall Street’s biggest investment banks are grappling with a big drop in deal volumes, as rising interest rates, high inflation and recession fears have slowed down the pace of large, transformational mergers.

Citi ranked fifth on the 2022 list of financial advisors based on deal value, and stands at ninth so far this year, according to Dealogic.

(Reporting by Mehnaz Yasmin in Bengaluru and Anirban Sen in New York; Editing by Devika Syamnath and Richard Chang)