Citi Forms a New Team in Its Trading Unit to Work With Black-Owned Banks

(Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc. created a new team inside its trading division that will focus on working more closely with minority depository institutions and diverse broker-dealers and asset managers.

The firm's new diverse financial institutions group team will be led by Harold Butler, a senior banker who spent 16 years covering the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve System in Citigroup's investment banking arm, according to a memo to staff Wednesday. Butler's new team will sit inside the company's global spread products unit's financing and securitization division.

“Harold will be responsible for coordinating with internal and external resources that will deliver capital-markets, transactional and corporate-banking solutions, and advice on risk management and strategy to a number of small and mid-sized financial institutions,” John Heppolette and Mitali Sohoni, co-heads of cross-asset financing and securitization, said in the memo.

In the aftermath of protests over George Floyd's death at the hands of police, many of the country's largest banks vowed to step up their efforts to mentor and work with the country's shrinking number of minority depository institutions. Since then, Citigroup and its rivals have poured $300 million in equity commitments into Black-owned banks and other minority financial firms.

Butler will report to Heppolette and Sohoni. His team is charged with expanding Citigroup's capital-markets activity with minority-owned broker-dealers and asset managers as well as oversee Citigroup's equity investments in minority depository institutions.