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Citi U.S. High-Yield Credit Analysts Exit as Bank Disbands Team

Citigroup is in the midst of dismissing about 400 people from its trading division to cut costs after a tough start to the year.

Citi U.S. High-Yield Credit Analysts Exit as Bank Disbands Team
Signage is displayed outside of a Citigroup inc. Citibank branch in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, U.S. (Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc. is disbanding its U.S. high-yield debt research team, cutting jobs while assigning some members of the group to other roles, according to people familiar with the matter.

Among the moves is managing director Manish Somaiya, who covered auto and industrial debt and is departing the bank. David Phipps, James Yoon and Bill Henry are also exiting. The disbanding doesn’t affect the bank’s macro strategist group.

Members of the research team either declined to comment or did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“Citi remains fully committed to its leveraged business,” spokesman Scott Helfman said in a statement. “We will continue to invest in our infrastructure, integrate analysts with our sales and trading effort, align fundamental and technical analyst views and provide a seamless primary issuance process to best serve our clients.”

Citigroup is in the midst of dismissing about 400 people from its trading division as the firm joins other banks including Deutsche Bank AG, Barclays Plc and Nomura Holdings Inc. in cutting costs after a tough start to the year on Wall Street. For U.S. banks, trading revenue in the first two quarters was the worst in more than a decade, as uncertainty about trade wars and Federal Reserve rate moves made some clients cautious and reluctant to buy or sell.

--With assistance from Sally Bakewell, Davide Scigliuzzo and Jenny Surane.

To contact the reporters on this story: Claire Boston in New York at cboston6@bloomberg.net;Gowri Gurumurthy in New York at gurug@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nikolaj Gammeltoft at ngammeltoft@bloomberg.net, Dan Wilchins, Adam Cataldo

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