US Bond House: Citigroup
Trustworthy guidance
The dependable dealflow and ballooning deal sizes that defined the US dollar bond market in 2025 belied the unique challenges underwriters faced when raising capital for clients. If it was not the threat of tariffs or AI overindulgence, it was something else. For helping issuers navigate this uncharted terrain, Citigroup is IFR’s US Bond House of the Year.
It was tricky year for debt capital markets in the US. The healthy calm of January and February, when anything seemed possible, gave way to the serious and unprecedented turmoil of March and April as the policies of Donald Trump's second administration started to bite. Market participants – all of a sudden – had to figure out what wildly fluctuating tariffs might mean for the bottom line, and it did not look good.
If that were not enough, adding to the uncertainty was a boom in AI spending, rather than an expected renaissance of M&A, that drove the bond markets and upended most predictions of what the year would look like. Plans had to be altered.
In this unaccustomed environment, when dealmakers everywhere were looking for guidance, Citigroup did what was next to impossible. For the 2025 IFR Awards period ending on November 7, the New York financial powerhouse climbed to the top of the LSEG investment-grade corporate bond league table, from the second spot during the same period of 2024.
The ascent up a league table that includes US dollar financial and corporate issuers and Yankee deals illustrated how the right mix of smart bankers and trusting clients, and the willingness of both to do deals in tough times, can go a long way.
When conditions were tough, clients more often than not relied on Citigroup to find the capital they needed, when they needed it. That was true across all sectors, but especially on the jumbo deals that came to define 2025.
When Mars hit the market in March to price US$26bn of bonds, when Oracle went to investors in September to raise US$18bn and when Meta Platforms took home US$30bn in October – all three of these mega fundraisings had a Citigroup banker helping lead the charge.
“When you look at the marquee transactions that were done this year, I think we were at the forefront of just about every one that existed, whether it be Meta [or] Oracle, whether it be advising Mars, which was the biggest 144A deal ever done,” said Jeffrey Kania, co-head of investment-grade capital markets for North America at Citigroup.
Most impressively, Citigroup was one of only two banks that were called on by Meta, one of the most demanding clients, to price what turned out to be the biggest corporate bond offering of the year. Citigroup was one of the banks the Facebook owner trusted to keep the deal a relative secret until pricing day, when the offering, IFR’s US Bond of the Year, attracted the biggest order book of any corporate deal on record. That the trade is one of a handful that has come to exemplify the AI spending race only adds lustre to a stellar deal.
Citigroup also found a way to move the needle in underwriting bond offerings for some of the most complex transactions from financial institutions. In March, it was an active bookrunner on a US$5bn five-part offering from Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the issuer’s biggest ever transaction, as well as a debut US$1.25bn two-part deal for First Citizens BancShares and a US$500m junior subordinated trade for Equitable Holdings. It also ran books on a US$1.25bn Additional Tier 1 deal in June for Royal Bank of Canada, a US$300m senior debut in July for Lazard and deals for Huntington and Brookfield in September.
“Financial markets are extremely competitive,” said John McAuley, head of North America DCM. “If you don't provide solutions to issuers and clients, someone else will.”
Citigroup has also climbed to third in LSEG’s US high-yield corporate debt league table with a 6.83% market share during the 2025 award period, from sixth with a 4.61% share in the same period in 2024. Driving that rise has been a renewed focus on sponsor-related business.
“As an entire institution we made a decision around 2020 to go risk-off a bit more on the sponsor business and we've been reentering that business over the last several years,” said Scott Sartorius, co-head of leveraged finance for North America.
Sartorius admitted that a sponsor business is not something that can be turned off and on like a “light switch”, but noted that Citigroup has claimed some key victories since it renewed its focus on sponsor-backed dealmaking. It was lead-left on a US$700m deal in January for Brookfield-backed Clarios and a US$700m deal for Apollo’s Lifepoint Health, and lead-left in August on a US$2.7bn two-part trade from BC Partners-owned PetSmart.