Citi Private Bank has beefed up its Law Firm Group with the appointment of four new team members who will join immediately, and will report to James Tsolakis, head of CPB’s Law Firm Group in EMEA.

Citi Private Bank has beefed up its Law Firm Group with the appointment of four new team members who will join immediately, and will report to James Tsolakis, head of CPB’s Law Firm Group in EMEA. Camille Barreto joins the London team as a private banker from Citi Private Bank in New York. Prior to joining the Private Bank in 2005, Ms Barreto was an investment banker for Citi Markets and Banking, where she advised global financial services firms on strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, equity and fixed income transactions. Frankie Casey and Shawn Christie both join from Barclays Wealth where they held the position of senior international relationship manager. Mr Casey joined Barclays in 2003 where he was top performing relationship manager attracting significant new business to the firm. Mr Christie joined Barclays in 2005 from BMO Bank of Montreal where he was a relationship manager and financial planner, Investment & Retirement Planning. He joined Barclays as part of the formation of their High Value International proposition. Joseph Tuson joins from Coutts where he qualified as a Private Banker in 2005 after joining Coutts on their graduate scheme in 2003. As a Private Banker Mr Tuson was responsible for fostering relationships with City law and accountancy firms. These hires follow the recent appointment of Mark Dean, who joined Citi as a director in April 2007 from Coutts where he was a senior private banker within the bank’s Professionals Client Group. Citi first decided to pursue law firms as a segment because it saw the very different needs of lawyers as a client group. The culture shock of entering a partnership, with its inevitably deleterious short-term cashflow effect is a very different experience from that of a corporate executive. Yet this measure of uncertainty doesn’t lead to the potentially huge gains that the even more uncertain entrepreneurial option gives. “Lawyers are often so client focused that they lose track of their own affairs and look very favourably on an advisor who can take much of this away from them,” Mr Tsolakis told WealthBriefing. “Our involvement includes helping partners build investment portfolios with a well balanced asset allocation reflecting their financial objectives, and evolves over time as those financial objectives and priorities focus on building wealth to provide for their retirement.” Commenting on the new appointments, Mr Tsolakis said: “The Law Firm Group is at an important stage of investment and growth in this region. These recent appointments underline the popularity of our products and services and our expertise in working with the legal profession.”