Dan Keegan, who recently worked as Citigroup’s Head of North American markets, has decided to leave the banking institution to establish an investment fund that is mainly focused on Fintech firms. This, according to a report from WSJ (which reviewed an internal memo).
Keegan has held key positions and had been assisting with building up Citigroup’s equities-trading unit during the last 15 years. Recently, he had worked as Head of North American markets, which is described as a strategic role serving as the institution’s representative to major clients.
Citigroup’s equities-trading division has consistently lagged behind its fixed-income unit, and the banking institution faced increased pressure from investors to demonstrate that the division was pulling its own weight. The bank has now climbed to the 5th position in total market share for equities.
Keegan had reportedly joined Citigroup when the institution had acquired Automated Trading Desk, the firm he was leading, back in 2007. At Citigroup, Keegan managed to become the co-head of international equities and also assisted as a lead to combine the organization’s equities and securities services units (which did not succeed).
Keegan also focused on the latest tech for trading operations. He has reportedly been part of the response to regulatory guidelines released in 2020 asking Citigroup to enhance its internal systems.
These activities put Keegan at the center of the company’s discussions with promising tech startups.
Citigroup has named Mike Saraceni, who heads investor sales and relationship management for North America, as the interim head of the region. The banking institution will be carrying out a search for his replacement. This, according to the memo from the international markets co-heads Carey Lathrop and Andy Morton.
Fintech firms have secured $210 billion in fresh investments in 2021, according to KPMG data.
The Pulse of Fintech H2’21 – which is a bi-annual report released by KPMG covering international Fintech investment trends – reveals that global Fintech funding across M&A, PE, and VC hit $210 billion (internationally) across an all-time record 5,684 deals during 2021.
Fintech funding in H2’21 accounted for $101 billion of this total – down moderately compared to H1’21’s $109 billion.
The biggest Fintech deals of H2’21 included the $9.2 billion acquisition of Denmark’s payments processor Nets by Italy’s Nexi, the $3.75 billion merger of Fintech Cloud platform firm Calypso Technology and Regtech AxiomSL to establish Adenza in the United States, and the $2.7 billion acquisition of Japan-headquartered Paidy by PayPal.