Citi targets commodities, equities in Asia

Citigroup is looking to boost its Asia markets division by up to 150 positions this year, building on the expansion of its equity, commodity and FX businesses as it seeks to take advantage of a pick-up in client trading activity.
Citi plans to keep hiring at about the same pace as in 2010 by pushing further into Asian equity markets and building a stronger commodities team to compete in a market where the bank has typically lagged rivals. "Commodities is a space where we have not been punching our weight in Asia in the breadth and depth or products, but that is changing fast," said Rodrigo Zorilla, Citi's Asia Pacific head of Markets, in an interview with Reuters.
Citi is adding about 10 more hires in commodities this year after nearly doubling its team to 40 last year when it hired Rob Biro, a long-time Goldman Sachs energy trader, to lead its Asia oil products team. Zorilla said the selloff in markets this month, which started in commodities and then spread across assets, showed that some funds had built up too many one-way positions just as the economic outlook turned cloudy and the euro zone crisis worsened.
"It all went the other way at the same time," he said. "The fundamentals of the Asia story are still there. I'm still bullish medium term, but the next few weeks and months, it's better to range trade."
In equities, Citi has expanded its brokerage trading to markets such as Indonesia and Malaysia, expanding its client sales coverage and making big hires in equity derivatives. Zorilla said the bank has made strides in capturing more flow business from existing clients by bringing primary markets and equities into the fold with the traditional fixed-income, currency and commodity trading platform - creating a single Markets unit.
"These are the ones who are really helping the bank regain its position," he said. Citi's Markets trading division currently totals about 1,500 people in Asia-Pacific and is one of the biggest in the region, covering 18 markets in FX, equities, credit and interest rates. The bulk of its staff are split between Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo.
Of the five to 10 percent hiring planned this year, Citi has added about 25 positions at the vice president level or above.
Citi has also benefited from the 2009 launch of its CitiFX Velocity trading platform, which applies technology from its equity high-frequency trading platform to the currency market and has helped the bank in the highly competitive FX space.
Zorilla said the algo-driven and high-frequency trading world of equities is "an example of where every other asset class is going to go eventually."