Resolution ditches Citi
RESOLUTION, the life funds group run by Clive Cowdery, yesterday ended its broking relationship with Citigroup following the summer departure of Andrew Thompson, one of the bank’s most senior corporate brokers.
Sources said that Resolution was “very much a relationship driven company” and that Thompson’s departure to Deutsche Bank was bound to make a difference to the bank’s relationship with Citigroup.
Resolution said its new financial advisers would be RBC and Barclays Capital, two institutions that were extremely supportive of a recent fundraising that Citigroup was not involved in.
Thompson looked after Citigroup’s relationships with a number of large UK financial institutions. The bank’s FTSE 100 financial services clients include Lloyds Banking Group, Icap, Resolution and F&C Asset Management.
Citigroup yesterday said that the bank had won mandates recently, including Punch Taverns and Deutsche Telekom, but that client losses were also inevitable from time to time.
Sources close to Citigroup said that the bank’s relationship with Resolution had been cool for a longish period and that Resolution’s decision had not come as a surprise.
Resolution’s choice of RBC as a joint adviser was no doubt assisted by the presence of Josh Critchley who had been the company’s broker while at his previous employer Goldman Sachs.
Resolution is the first FTSE 100 client to be won by RBC’s rapidly expanding European capital markets team which has gone from 10 to 22 clients over the past year. “This demonstrates our ability to advise companies up and down the size scale,” says Critchley.