Exclusive: Citi hires BofA's Baird as ECM chairman

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc (C.N) poached a top equity capital markets banker from Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) as it tries to rebuild its investment bank.

Doug Baird, a managing director in U.S. equity capital markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, will join Citigroup in August as Chairman of Equity Capital Markets for the Americas, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

In his newly created post, Baird will report to John Chirico, Citigroup's co-head of capital markets origination for the Americas, one of the sources told Reuters.

Baird spent almost four years at Bank of America, initially as co-head of equity capital markets. He resigned on Monday, according to one of the sources.

A third source confirmed Baird's resignation and said Monday was his last day at the largest U.S. bank.

Before Bank of America, Baird worked for almost 20 years at Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE), where he most recently was co-head of the equity capital markets unit.

The hiring is part of Citigroup's push to build up staff at its investment bank, which lost talent, reputation and business during the financial crisis that brought the company to the brink of failure.

The bank, which needed $45 billion in U.S. government bailouts to survive the crisis, last month said it planned to hire about 500 people in its institutional clients group.

Its first-quarter revenue from equity underwriting fell 9 percent from a year earlier, to $204 million. Citigroup had only a 7.2 percent share of the U.S. equity capital markets business last year, and ranked sixth to Bank of America's third in the league tables compiled by Thomson Reuters.

Citigroup also lags its larger rival in U.S. equity capital markets so far this year, but the gap is much smaller. Bank of America currently ranks second in the league tables, underwriting $9.8 billion in equity-related offerings, while Citigroup ranks fourth, underwriting $9.6 billion.

Citigroup and Bank of America declined to comment.

(Reporting by Maria Aspan; additional reporting by Joe Rauch in Charlotte; Editing by Derek Caney and John Wallace)