Citi Private Bank has expanded its preferred custody and escrow group on the West Coast, hiring Luda Semenova and Raafat Sarkis as directors, based in Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively.

Citi Private Bank has expanded its preferred custody and escrow group on the West Coast, hiring Luda Semenova and Raafat Sarkis as directors, based in Los Angeles and San Francisco, CA, respectively.

Sarkis and Semenova will report to Kerry Gibson, western region market manager for Citi Private Bank's law firm group. They join a team of global custody and escrow professionals in New York and will provide escrow and agency services for Citi's West Coast law firm clients.

“Expanding our market share in the M&A escrow field is a key priority for our business and the best way to provide the most effective service for our West Coast law firm clients is to give them direct access to our staff locally,” said Naz Vahid, head of the law firm group at Citi Private Bank.

Semenova joins from Wells Fargo in Los Angeles, where she was most recently vice president of corporate trust services. Before that, she was vice president of global transaction banking at Deutsche Bank Trust & Securities Services, and previously vice president of business development for global corporate trust at The Bank of New York. Earlier still, Semenova held roles at Bank of America Private Bank in Los Angeles, CA, and Morgan Stanley in Portland, OR.

Sarkis, meanwhile, joins from the San Francisco, CA, office of Wells Fargo where he was vice president of corporate trust services and worked with Semenova in Los Angeles to manage client relationships across the western US.

Prior to Wells Fargo, Sarkis was vice president and business manager for corporate trust and escrow services at Deutsche Bank National Trust Company. Before joining Deutshe in 2004, he worked at US Bank National Association as vice president of business development within corporate trust services. He previously spent ten years at Bank of America, and before that held senior roles at First Interstate Bank, Rufus Associates and the Crocker Bank.