Citi Private Bank has appointed Polina Poluneeva as a private banker for its Geneva office, covering Russia and other CIS countries, in a bid to boost its wealth management presence in the region, WealthBriefing has learned.

Poluneeva most recently worked in the sales and marketing team for energy and commodities structured debt at BNP Paribas, particularly dealing with the implementation of complex debt structures for the key commodity players in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. In her prior career Poluneeva was with WestLB in Germany, working on long term financing for various commodities producers across the CIS.

In other news, earlier this week Citi announced the creation of a new family office unit designed to target the rising number of global family office clients.