Ray McGuire, a former Citi vice chairman, will join Lazard as the firm’s president April 3, the company announced Wednesday.
McGuire will oversee strengthening relationships with senior clients, attracting talent, and expanding Lazard’s reach worldwide, the company said.
“I’ve known, admired and respected Lazard and its talented dealmakers since my days as a student living in France in the early 1980s and throughout my investment banking career,” McGuire said in a statement. “I am excited to help broaden Lazard’s reach with investors and senior corporate leadership in boardrooms and across industry sectors throughout the world.”
The move will reunite McGuire with Peter Orszag, the former Citi dealmaker who became CEO of Lazard's financial advisory business.
“Exceptional people like to be around exceptional teams and people,” Orszag told Bloomberg. “Ray is clearly exceptional.”
Throughout his career as an investment banker, McGuire was involved in more than $750 billion worth of transactions, according to Lazard’s release. He spent more than a decade at Citi, running the bank’s global corporate and investment banking arm before becoming chair of its banking, capital markets and advisory business. McGuire served as Citi’s vice chair from 2018 to 2020, according to his LinkedIn profile.
While at Citi, McGuire served as an adviser on several transactions, including Time Warner’s combination with AT&T and subsequent spinoff of Time Warner Cable.
McGuire left Citi in 2020 and ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York City.
McGuire’s Wall Street career began at The First Boston Corp.’s mergers-and-acquisitions department in 1984. He later joined Wasserstein Perella & Co., becoming a partner and managing director in 1991.
Before joining Citi in 2005, McGuire also worked as global co-head of M&A at Morgan Stanley and as a managing director at Merrill Lynch.
“He’s an iconic banker, and this is the perfect platform. To have someone of this level of talent and seniority to join us is important from a client perspective and also a talent perspective,” Lazard CEO Kenneth Jacobs told Bloomberg. “In this business, you don’t want to hire in the boom times and only fire in the weaker times, you try to do this countercyclically, so you’re bringing in great people throughout the cycle.”
