These days, JPMorgan and Citi’s investment banking teams are a bit like one big blended family. In the past year, the two banks have swapped all sorts of people. And now those people are under pressure to perform.
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At JPMorgan, Bloomberg reports that bankers are being asked to work harder in 2026. Fourth quarter M&A revenues at JPMorgan fell by 2.5% while at Citi they were up 84%. Arch rival Goldman Sachs was top of the global M&A league tables for 2025. JPMorgan, was a lowly third behind Morgan Stanley. Citi was a lowlier fourth.
JPMorgan bankers are therefore being encouraged to put themselves about. Last year, JPMorgan hired 100 new managing directors (MDs). This year, the bank says its senior bankers begun the year by touring clients in Europe and the US. In a pep talk last week, JPMorgan’s global heads of banking John Simmons and Filippo Gori told their people to work harder to win back market share.
2026 is therefore shaping up to be a battle for M&A revenues between all four top US banks, but that battle may be particularly intense between the incestuous parties of JPMorgan and Citi.
Citi’s bankers have had their own pep talk from CEO Jane Fraser, who started the year with a memo extolling them to be out there “competing for the full wallet, and not settling for a secondary role or missed opportunity.” This follows previous pepping from head of banking Vis Raghavan, who suggested in 2024 that Citi’s bankers lacked gumption.
As the race heats up and CEOs everywhere find themselves feted by bankers touting deals, Citi’s people should at least be enthused by their bonuses. Financial News reports today that they’ve been paid up by up to 15% and that some people got 20%. Others, however, got nothing. It’s not clear where Citi’s ex-JPMorgan people featured in this.
Separately, private credit woes were a theme of late 2025, and now they’re a theme of early 2026.
It emerged yesterday that Amazon wrote down a portion of its $170m financing to Amazon aggregator Perch to zero. This comes after it also emerged after markets closed on Friday that a BlackRock private debt fund has cut the value of its assets by 19%. It also comes after the FT reported that private credit investors have attempted to redeem 5% of shares from a $34bn Blue Owl fund.
While this is going on, the FT also reports that private credit funds are selling debt back to themselves at record rates. Jefferies says there were $15bn of private credit continuation deals globally last year, up from almost $4bn in 2024.
“There’s loans sitting there, nobody knows what to do with them, and credit managers are not in a position to sell them,” says one lawyer specialising in such things. The private credit hiring bubble may also be over.
Meanwhile…
David Solomon said some densely worded things about hiring. “It’s probably a bit more constrained in 2026, we see opportunities for efficiency and we try to deploy those. Those efficiency opportunities give us more of an opportunity to invest in parts of our business where we can scale growth and some of that growth scales with additional headcount.” (Bloomberg)
Goldman Sachs says its risk appetite indicator hit 1.09 last week, the highest since 2021. (Bloomberg)
Citi would like to move the sexual harassment case lodged by ex-managing director Julia Carreon to arbitration. It says Carreon sent Andy Sieg sycophantic messages like: “Thank you for recognising my talent, for putting me in the room, and for treating me with respect. You are truly one of the most exceptional people & leaders I’ve ever met. Your integrity is irreproachable.” (Financial Times)
A former Citi MD pleaded guilty to drugging and sexually assaulting women as well as purchasing child pornography. Citi says: “We moved to terminate Mr. Smith immediately upon learning about law enforcement’s initial investigation, well before the allegations of this depraved behavior came to light.” (Bloomberg)
UBS wants to dismiss Tom Hayes’ $400m case against it. It says he can’t prove that UBS prosecuted him or initiated his prosecution” or “that UBS acted maliciously.” (Bloomberg)
DCM bankers need to get friendly with big tech. Morgan Stanley estimates that hyperscalers and adjacent companies will raise $400bn from the US high-grade market in 2026, up from $44bn in 2024. (Financial Times)
RIP NFTs. Gemini is closing Nifty Gateway its NFT marketplace whose trading volume totalled $1.58 billion, down 87% from the first three months of 2022. (Bloomberg)
Diego Megia hired Richard Hughes for his hedge fund Taula Capital. Hughes will be an economic advisor. He was previously head of the Office for Budgetary Responsibility, until the budget was accidentally released early. (Bloomberg)
Everyone wants to trade precious metals. Citadel hired Yan Adler to do it too. (Bloomberg)
Tech bros think it’s about to become too late to make generational money, what with AI. (WSJ)
A possibly apocryphal story about dating a banker. (DatingbyBlaine)
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