After over two decades of working for the firm, Citigroup’s last remaining prop trader, Anna Raytcheva, is leaving. Bloomberg:
Citigroup Inc. mortgage trader Anna Raytcheva, who most recently ran a trading desk that wagered the bank’s money, will leave the firm later this month.
Raytcheva plans to start a systematic hedge fund with a discretionary overlay in the coming months that will bet on macro events, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named because the information is private.
Bulgarian-born Raytcheva joined the American firm’s options trading desk back in 1994, and most recently manned a unique post-Volcker Rule prop team called the strategic-trading desk. She began leading the five-person group back in 2014, just as the bank’s peers either slashed or exited the practice, and apparently lost quite a bundle trading mortgages the same year.
As for Citi’s history with prop trading, that goes even further. According to The Wall Street Journal, Citi’s prop trading roots go all the way to the bond trading powerhouse Salomon Brothers, and it has seen its practice flourish all the way up to great financial crisis, where many of its peers – including Citi itself – posted serious losses on mortgages and other securities.
The Volcker Rule however has forced banks to largely eliminate the practice, and with Raytcheva’s exit, any significant form of it from Citi goes along with her.
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