Barclays has hired one of the top financial sponsors bankers from Citi as it continues to grow its investment banking business.
Johannes Vavrovsky, who had been with Citi Group for the last 13 years, joined Barclays as a managing director in its London office in June. While at Citi, he was with the bank’s European alternative asset group, Citi’s equivalent of a financial sponsors division.
Vavrovsky began his career as a consultant for IT firm Cap Gemini in 2002 and left a year and a half later to pursue an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business. He landed a job with Citi Group in 2005 and rose through the ranks to become a managing director a decade later. Now he’s moving on.
Vavrovsky’s arrival at Barclays comes when activist investor Edward Bramson, who took a 5% stake in Barclays earlier this February, is aggressively pushing for closing down the bulk of trading functions at the British lender’s investment bank to cut costs and boost returns. Barclays let go of 100 directors and managing directors earlier this January, In May, it cut four senior people from its European credit trading team.
However, under pressure to deliver results, Barclays is strengthening its position by bringing in new talent, particularly in the investment banking division. Investment bank CEO Tim Throsby outlined his plan to increase revenues at the bank in September last year. Under Throsby, Barclays hired around 40 managing directors across its investment bank in 2017. So far this year, it’s hired around nine managing directors to its EMEA investment banking business, Vavrofsky included.