Citi hires up, installing roughly a dozen private-bank leaders in the past 15 months, a move meant to lift the lender higher among North America’s biggest private banks, an executive said.
Leadership push in North America
The New York-based bank already ranks among the world’s top private-bank providers, yet it aims to expand its domestic footprint. In May 2025, it named Chris Biotti head of North America for its private-bank division.
Biotti told reporters the institution oversees more than $1 trillion in wealth-client assets worldwide, while about $3 trillion in North America remains outside its reach. He arrived from Bank of America, where he ran the Northeast private-bank unit.
CEO Jane Fraser and other senior leaders have stressed the need to attract additional client assets and improve returns. “Jane says it best: To be the best, you have to beat the best, and so we’re going to have to beat the best all along that continuum to get to No. 1,” Biotti quoted.
Rebuilding after the 2008 shift
Following the post-2008 sale of the Smith Barney wealth-management business to Morgan Stanley, the bank’s North American wealth position “changed drastically,” Biotti noted, and the firm is now reconstructing that standing.
He added, “They knew what they were pitching to me.” “I’m someone that likes a challenge, and so, from my perspective, the ability to mold this and to grow it, and to have that top ranking here in North America, is very appealing to me.”
The average private-bank client at the institution holds about $400 million in net worth. Clients are typically global, with complex needs, and the bank serves roughly one-quarter of the world’s billionaires, Biotti said.
“Our biggest asset, in my mind, is our globality,” he asserted, highlighting the cross-border nature of its clientele.
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Team expansion and new hires
Biotti’s peers include Kris Bitterly Michell for Latin America, James Holder for the U.K., Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Steven Lo overseeing Asia and Australia. They meet weekly with Andy Sieg, the bank’s head of wealth.
Recent arrivals from Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and BlackRock—such as Dawn Nordberg, Anne McCosker and Kate Moore—made Biotti’s move “easy,” he said. “For the first time in my career,” he said, “my phone is ringing.”
Since Biotti assumed his role, the lender has added 43 bankers or investment counselors to its private bank.
New market executives include Chad Reddy (Western U.S.), Clinton Warren (Central U.S.), Woodward Middleton Jr. (Southeast), Yannick Archambault (Canada) and Sam Gottesman (Northeast).
At the May investor day, Sieg reported the private bank employs about 620 bankers and investment counselors worldwide, with plans to add roughly 100 more soon.
Gottesman, slated to start in November, comes from Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase private-bank units. Biotti described the hire as “strategic” for the “wealth corridor” linking Washington D.C. to New York, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, Delaware and southern New Jersey.
Geographic focus and market trends
The North America unit operates 17 offices across the United States and three in Canada. Biotti monitors wealth concentrations, noting migration toward Texas and Florida, a continued hotspot in California, and rising fortunes in the Carolinas.
