Several new key hires have recently joined the Citigroup Global Trade Services and Finance team.

Serra Akcaoglu has joined as EMEA trade finance and services head. Before this, she served for five years with Citigroup in Turkey, first as trade head then as head of the Turkey/Israel cluster for Citigroup’s Global Transaction Services (GTS).

Before joining Citigroup, Akcaoglu was the corporate bank product and risk head for Kocbank for five years and a senior banker at Chemical Bank for 10 years.

Simon Constantinides joins as director, trade sales, North America. For the past 11 years, he was at Wachovia where he was most recently trade sales manager for middle market and large corporate sales efforts in eight northern states and Europe, with a heavy focus on retail, apparel and consumer products.

At Wachovia, Constantinides was also actively engaged in developing e-commerce solutions geared toward the consumer products sector and co-headed the launch of the trade supply chain solutions team. He started his career at Standard Chartered Bank where he received credit training and was a line officer focused on apparel companies.

Amita Jhangiani also joins as Asia Pacific trade head. In this Hong Kong-based position, Jhangiani is responsible for Citigroup’s trade product across Asia Pacific and Japan for both corporate and financial institution clients.

With more than 20 years of experience in trade, she was most recently managing director and trade finance Asia Pacific head for Deutsche Bank. Before this, she built a strong track record in management, business development, deal closing and product development at Chase Manhattan and Deutsche.

Fran Martell joins as director, North American standby LC product manager. Martell was previously at UBS Investment Bank where she managed the business development and initiatives (BDI) team that had responsibility for project management of infrastructure and operational improvements for back office processing of commercial loans, US dollar clearing, money market, foreign exchange and letters of credit.

Before joining UBS, she managed the New York trade operations team of First Chicago. She has served on the International Financial Services Association standby and commercial letter of credit committees and participated as a co-presenter in their annual education seminars.

Bill Nowicki joins as client delivery head, where is responsible for overseeing trade clients “post-sale experience, initially focusing on improving the implementation process and reducing implementation cycle time. He will work closely with other regional and functional managers to drive client satisfaction and revenue growth opportunities.

In his more than 20 years of wholesale banking experience, Nowicki has acquired specialised expertise in trade finance and cash management services. Most recently, he was global head of transaction sales for Standard Chartered, where he was responsible for all aspects of trade, cash and clearing services for financial institutions. Earlier he served as Standard Chartered’s group head for commercial banking and trade operations in Singapore and was also head of service delivery for its wholesale banking operations in New York.

Carl Stocking joined late last year as Asia Pacific regional head of trade sales. Based in Hong Kong, Stocking is responsible for driving Citigroup’s trade business across the region. He has over 20 years “experience in international banking, in a variety of roles, including relationship management and trade finance. Most recently he was regional head of financial institutions at ABN Amro and earlier held senior roles in trade at ABN and Wachovia.

Erik Wanberg joins as North America trade head. He joins global trade from being North America head for Citigroup’s distribution finance. With an extensive background of more than 20 years in trade finance, particularly with highly complex and structured transactions and innovative inventory ownership programmes, Wanberg has attained a successful track record in management, business development, deal closing and product development.
Before joining Citigroup in 2004, he was West Coast region manager for GE Capital Trade Distribution Services. Earlier he served as a senior vice-president at Silicon Valley Bank, senior manager for Royal Bank of Canada Trade Finance and a vice-president and manager at Wells Fargo HSBC Trade Bank.