Inside the mystery of Nacho Gutiérrez-Orrantia’s many jobs at Citi

Nacho Gutiérrez-Orrantia has got a new job at Citi. What does he do there? He is many things. 

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As of today, Gutiérrez-Orrantia has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of Citibank Europe plc and Vice Chair and Member of the Supervisory Board of Bank Handlowy w Warszawie S.A. This in addition to his existing jobs of ‘Head of Europe Cluster and Banking.’

What do these jobs involve? 

As ‘Head of Europe Cluster and Banking’, Citi says that Gutiérrez-Orrantia: “has overall responsibility for managing relationships with Citi’s clients in Europe, across all businesses, and accountability for a robust risk and control environment.”

As Chief Executive Officer of Citibank Europe plc, Citi says Gutiérrez-Orrantia is head of Citi’s Dublin-based European entity for regulatory purposes. 

And as Vice Chair and Member of the Supervisory Board of Bank Handlowy w Warszawie S.A. he has a supervisory role at “one of the largest financial institutions in Poland.”

The array of roles sounds very impressive. However, it also sounds slightly titular and rather…regulatory.

Ostensibly, Gutiérrez-Orrantia is still client-facing, but maybe less so than in the recent past. Until November 2023, he was “Co-Head of Investment Banking and Capital Markets, Europe, UK, Middle East & Africa at Citi.” That job has effectively since gone to Jens Welter, who was named head of EMEA and UK investment banking when Gutiérrez-Orrantia was moved into his grandiose spread of new roles.

The distinction between Gutiérrez-Orrantia and Welter in the new structure seems vague. Ostensibly, Gutiérrez-Orrantia is still a client facing banker: he now heads all commercial and investment banking activity in Europe. Welter only heads all investment banking activity in EMEA and the UK.

It might be presumed therefore that Welter would report into Gutiérrez-Orrantia who seems to have the bigger umbrella, but no. Welter reports to Tyler Dickson, Citi’s global co-head of banking, capital markets and advisory. Gutiérrez-Orrantia himself reports to Ernesto Torres Cantú, head of Citi’s international business Torres Cantú is all about “partnering” with the banking organization to “drive client engagement” while strengthening “risk management in each geography.” The waft of risk and regulation is strong; the waft of client management, less so. There have been suggestions that Citi has created a structure within a structure to keep some of its powerful banking factions happy while simultaneously giving them less interesting risk and regulation jobs.

What does Gutiérrez-Orrantia want to do? Last year he was rumored to be moving to Naturgy Energy Group, a Spanish energy firm, but that didn’t come to pass. It might help to refer to his LinkedIn profile. There, he still says he’s “Co-Head of Investment Banking and Capital Markets, Europe, UK, Middle East & Africa at Citi” [or he did as of 3pm UK time today]. Maybe this is easier to explain than his current selection of positions.

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