(Bloomberg) — Citigroup Inc. is hiring Cyril Besseddik from JPMorgan Chase & Co. to lead coverage of health-care companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for its investment bank.
Besseddik is set to join Citigroup’s banking, capital markets advisory group in May and will be based in London, according to an internal memo seen by Bloomberg News. He was most recently co-head of EMEA health-care investment banking at JPMorgan.
The banker was with JPMorgan for more than seven years and previously did stints at UBS Group AG and Merrill Lynch, according to his LinkedIn profile. A representative for Citigroup confirmed the contents of the memo.
“Going into 2023, it really feels like corporate M&A is back and activity levels are picking up,” Chuck Adams, who is vice chairman and global head of health-care, consumer and retail banking at Citigroup, said in an interview Monday.
“We are seeing a lot of interest from companies in the sector—whether its the pharma names or medtech or services companies—a clear desire to look at M&A to pursue their growth objectives,” he said.
Besseddik will report to Adams, as well as into Jens Welter and Ignacio Gutierrez-Orrantia, co-heads of Citigroup’s BCMA business in EMEA.
Citigroup will continue to selectively expand its health-care team in Europe, according to Adams, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who joined the firm in 2021.
“Some of the larger European pharmaceutical companies have been relatively quiet when it comes to M&A and we expect that to change as they look out for growth,” he said. “We think that activity from European majors is only going to increase, and we are beginning to see examples of that.”
Citigroup combined its global health-care investment banking business with its consumer and retail team in 2021, creating a “super group” to help