Mark Zaguskin had a good run at Citi and it recently got better still. Nonetheless, he’s exchanged his trading job and big title at the bank for what appears to be a more diminutive job title at hedge fund Citadel in Miami.
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Zaguskin joined Citi in 2010 after graduating from Michigan State University. In February 2023, the bank promoted to him head of US inflation trading. Sixteen months after receiving that promotion, Zaguskin just announced on social media that he’s joining Citadel as an associate portfolio manager instead.
Citadel declined to comment on Zaguskin’s arrival. Associate portfolio manager (PM) is a major role at the fund and a step to becoming a full PM. Superficially, though, it doesn’t sound as impressive as heading Citi’s entire US inflation trading operation, even if Citi’s inflation trading desk was small by comparison.
Zaguskin was a director at Citi and might have hoped to make managing director this year, following the departure of various key figures, including Pedro Goldbaum and Nikolay Stoyanov in 2023. Not anymore.
There was a rush of inflation trader hiring last year, but things seemed to have calmed down in 2024. Citadel is clearly still strengthening its inflation desk after adding the likes of Joaquin de Soto, one of Goldman Sachs’ top London inflation traders last year. Zaguskin is a big hire.
In 2016, Citi’s New York dollar interest rates swap desk made $300m in profits and Zaguskin was one of four traders cited as responsible. The desk at the time was being run by Geoffrey Weber, who remains at Citi as global head of G10 rates trading and financing. Daniel Gottlander, another member of that team, left for Citadel Securities in 2017 and returned to Citi three years later.
Many banks have submitted to title inflation as a means of keeping staff happy at a time when jobs are being cut and bonuses squeezed. Buy-side firms have sidestepped this temptation, meaning that accepting a less grandiose-seeming title may be the outcome of making the move in 2024.
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