Brendan McDermid/ReutersCitigroup plans to hire 2,500 programmers for its trading and investment banking units, Bloomberg reported Monday.
The move comes amid a shift in the industry as major banks spend more on electronic programs, looking to unlock greater cost efficiencies and introduce new products to clients.
About 75% of Citi’s trades were electronic in 2019, Stuart Riley, global head of operations and technology for the bank’s Institutional Clients Group, told Bloomberg.
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Citigroup is looking to hire 2,500 coders for its trading and investment banking units, Bloomberg reported Monday.
The move comes as major banks shift from in-person trading operations to algorithmic programs. About 75% of Citi’s trades were electronic in 2019, Stuart Riley, global head of operations and technology for Citi’s Institutional Clients Group, told Bloomberg.
The push for programmers reveals “what we are building in technology and why we are focused on making salespeople and traders more effective at servicing our clients,” Riley said in an interview with Bloomberg.
“Technology is augmenting what humans do by making better use of data,” he added.
Citi allocates about $8.5 billion, or 20% of its budget, to technology every year, according to Bloomberg. JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs have also been hiring more programmers to revamp their trading operations.
Citi’s bolstered investment in electronic trading will help drive as much as $600 million in savings in 2020, Bloomberg reported. The firm recently shrank its trading business to meet efficiency goals. Citi’s total hires fell to 199,000 by the fourth quarter of 2019, an 18% drop from five years prior.
Citi already used its growing tech team to automate pricing, news, and analytics, Riley told Bloomberg. The newest class of recruits will focus primarily on equities and fixed income projects, bringing data-driven efficiencies to inherently unpredictable businesses.
“The delineation between traders and technologists in markets is disappearing,” Riley said.
The sentiment was echoed in September by Goldman Sachs’ former trading chief Marty Chavez. The bank’s tech guru summarized his time at Goldman as “making money, capital, and risk programmable,” adding that traders and engineers won’t exist “as two completely different things for long.”
Citigroup traded at $79.42 per share at 11:15 a.m. ET Monday, down roughly 0.4% from Friday’s closing price.
The bank has 22 “buy” ratings, four “hold” ratings, and one “sell” rating from analysts, with a consensus price target of $86.52, according to Bloomberg data.
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