Chris Stone has got a new job. Having left Citi in April, he is back – at Marex the execution service provider, which he’s joining with two members of his team.
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Stone didn’t respond to a request to comment for this article. On LinkedIn, he says he’s a managing director at Marex and is joining this month. Financial News first reported Stone’s imminent arrival at Marex a few weeks ago.
Stone arrives at Marex after the platform announced its acquisition of UK equities market maker Winterflood earlier this week.
Marex intends to grow its UK cash equities business by expanding its asset and wealth management clients. At Citi, Stone was head of high and low touch futures execution. He’s joining Marex with Ben Nathan Citi’s ex-head of commodities high touch execution, and Ben Parker, Citi’s ex-head of real money high touch.
Marex has doubled its headcount since 2022. Citi, however, has been busy cutting 20,000 jobs from across its business. Gordon Ball, the bank’s former head of electronic execution, left in August 2024 and has yet to reappear elsewhere. Citi’s equities sales and trading revenues rose only 5% year-on-year in the second quarter, versus increases of 35% and 15% respectively at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan.
Citi insiders say the equities business is being hampered by ongoing remediation efforts after a blow-up on the delta one desk in 2022 in which a trader ignored 711 warning messages and made a £38m loss. Critics claim the bank is also playing catch-up in prime broking and lacks sufficient technology budget to compete with the likes of Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan.
Last year, Citi’s equities business was the subject of various complaints about its culture. This year, things have been quieter on this front.
Speaking off the record, sources at Citi described Stone as “one of the last great client coverage men.”
Citi’s equities business is staffed by various ex-Goldman Sachs people. They include Greg Collett, who joined in March 2024 to run EMEA prime broking sales and Sam Baig, Citi’s recently promoted head of cash futures and execution who joined from Goldman ten years ago, but is said to continue to favour hiring from there.
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