Investment banks have been adding MDs. But they’re not adding them equally

One of the best proxies for how ambitious a bank is, is its hiring of managing directors (MDs). 

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MDs are at the top of the hierarchy in an investment bank, and the title is often associated with front-office roles at the bank. At Goldman Sachs, for example, 70% of the most recently-promoted MD class were in a revenue-generating function. Hiring MDs indicates investment in the business – whether they’re recruited for investment banking, sales & trading business, or support roles. 

To track the global changes, we analysed the number of Managing Directors that joined a score of global investment banks based in Europe and North America. We did this by tracking how they changed their employers and/or job titles on social media site LinkedIn.

There was a pretty clear trend. The big five American banks – Goldman, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citi, and BofA – added more MDs in the period than every single other bank (that we analysed) combined.

Wells Fargo and Jefferies, neither of which are considered bulge bracket banks in the USA, added more MDs together than Barclays, Deutsche Bank, and BNP Paribas combined, despite the latter three being national champions in the UK, Germany, and France respectively.

Of all banks we looked at, Citi added the most MDs – which should be no surprise to anyone. Its new head of investment banking, Vis Raghavan, has been particularly hire-happy since he joined the bank – and many of the new faces have been former colleagues of his from JPMorgan, where he was briefly global head of investment banking.

New banking faces at Citi from JPMorgan include Rob Cascarino, while those not from JPMorgan include Jonas Curchack and Alena Antigua. Others, such as Zack Li and Chris Roberts, are not in revenue-generating roles.

Not one to be undone, JPMorgan is also hiring significantly. The bank reportedly poached more than 100 senior bankers from rivals including Citi over a period from “early 2024” to September 2025. These MDs include Simon d’Souza, its EMEA chief data officer, who joined JPM in June of this year.

The fewest MD were hired at European banks. Santander and UniCredit hired fewer MDs than some American boutique banks, including Evercore and Lazard. Even combined, they hired roughly as many MDs as HSBC, a bank which is currently knee-deep in a brutal period of firing, dismantling, and restructuring.

The table below is based on our analysis of LinkedIn data. It’s possible that the data for managing director hires understates the reality because not everyone who’s an MD will be on LinkedIn, or will include their job title there. Nonetheless, while the exact numbers may be higher, the proportions between banks should be accurate.

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