Murphy takes top prime broking job at Citi

Prime broking veteran David Murphy is to join Citi as head of prime finance in Asia-Pacific after resigning from Deutsche Bank this week, AsianInvestor can confirm.

Murphy is to start at the beginning of December. He will be reporting to Nick Roe, Citi's global head of prime finance based in London, and Rodrigo Zorilla, head of markets Asia-Pacific based in Singapore.

Hannah Goodwin, who has headed Citi's prime broking business for many years with the bank continuing to develop that function, will continue in the role until Murphy joins.

At that point she will assume a role entitled 'prime brokerage head', with responsibility over the management of all client-facing business outside of Delta One and prime finance trading – in prime broking parlance, that means activities such as sales, consultancy and capital introductions. She relinquishes her responsibilities for trading that Murphy will pick up in future.

Initially AsianInvestor was informed that Goodwin would be reporting into David Ratliff, Citi's head of investor sales for Asia-Pacific based in Hong Kong. However, it transpires that she will, in fact, be reporting to Murphy.

As reported exclusively by AsianInvestor, Murphy had been on the verge of moving to London to work in a senior managing director role for Deutsche, but then decided to stay in Hong Kong, and quit earlier this week to join Citi.

Murphy landed in Hong Kong with Deutsche Bank in 2009 but has been with the German bank since 2002 based in New York.

In Hong Kong he was co-head of one wing of Deutsche's prime brokerage business along with Anthony Byrne. That wing deals with risk, index, stock borrowing/lending and transition, and employs 40 people.

Byrne has confirmed to AsianInvestor that he will be sole head of that business. He returned to Hong Kong in July this year after working in Europe for Deutsche as co-head of prime finance there. He had worked in Deutsche Hong Kong for a spell 10 years ago.