Cecilia Ronan steps down as Citigroup’s Europe chief due to ill health

The head of Citigroup’s pan-European banking unit in Dublin, Cecilia Ronan, has stepped down from the position due to ill health.

Ms Ronan has also resigned as Citigroup’s country officer for Ireland, where the group is in the process of expanding its workforce to 2,800, as she focuses on her recovery.

A notification of the Limerick native’s resignation as a director of Dublin-based Citibank Europe plc, which had about 11,000 employees across 21 European countries as of the end of last year, was filed with the Companies Registration Office (CRO) in recent days.

However, staff were informed of her decision a few weeks ago. Ms Ronan has been on leave since June, resulting in Citibank Europe’s finance chief, Silvia Carpitella, stepping into the chief executive role on an interim basis. The bank’s associate general counsel, Davinia Conlon, has been acting as interim country head for Ireland in recent times.

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Ms Ronan has been an employee of the US bank in Dublin since 2000 and was selected in early 2020 to head Citibank Europe. The internal email said that the group will select permanent successors to the executive in both roles “in the coming months”.

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Citi – as the group has become more commonly known – was among the first major overseas banks to enter the Republic, setting up a base on Dawson Street in 1965 as it followed major US clients expanding into the country under then taoiseach Seán Lemass’s push to reverse decades of protectionist Irish policies.

It would become one of the IFSC’s biggest success stories, evolving from a push in the 1990s into low-cost services for the group to becoming home to Citi’s first financial technology research and innovation centre in 2009, at a time when many other overseas banks were retreating from the Republic.

Citibank Europe’s assets effectively doubled to about $50 billion (€48.7bn) in 2016 when the UK-based Citibank International unit was folded into the Dublin operation – months before the Brexit referendum.

The bank is in advanced talks to sell its existing Liffey-side European headquarters and, separately, to acquire office space that property entrepreneur Johnny Ronan and US investment are developing further down the river. Citibank Europe said in April that it planned to add 300 jobs to the group’s then 2,500-strong workforce in Dublin.