Richard Burns, the former global head of retail structured products and hybrid products at Citi in London, has been appointed global head of the bank's global market -áYield Book business, according to a Citi internal memo seen by SRP.
Yield Book, originally developed by Salomon Brothers in 1989, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Citigroup providing analytics and indices to buy-side and sell-side institutions. Yield Book products are used for portfolio and risk management, performance attribution and market-making activities. Yield Book also includes a range of indices, such as the World Government Bond Index (WGBI), and can create custom benchmarks.
In his new role, Burns will report to Citi's head of global markets, Paco Ybarra, and will continue to be based in London.
Ybarra said the move is a response to an increase in the bank's investment in Yield Book which has tremendous potential in the ETF and ETN space.
As the world evolves and is increasingly looking to use analytics platforms for solutions and product development, we are increasing our investment in Yield Book, said Ybarra. I have asked Richard to focus on building our strategy around growth, global presence and client acquisition.
Thomas Klaffky, Yield Book's managing director based in New York, will continue to run the day-to-day activities of the index group and will report to Burns.
The news follows the recent strategic reorganisation of Citi's structured retail products business that saw a number of positions being reshuffled at the beginning of the summer. As reported, Citi's cross-asset solutions division is no longer to be a standalone operation and is being split into structuring and trading, which will remain global, and distribution, which will have a regional set up.