Leader, Innovator, Entrepreneur

Chad A. Leat, retired Vice Chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup has nearly thirty years of markets and banking experience on Wall Street. He is an acknowledged leader and innovator in corporate credit and M&A finance having led some of the largest acquisition financings completed. Over the years he has built and led numerous successful and profitable businesses at Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and their predecessor companies. 

Mr. Leat joined Salomon Brothers in 1997 as a partner in High Yield Capital Markets and retired from Citigroup in 2013 as Vice Chairman. Over the years he served on the firm’s Investment Banking Management Committee, the Fixed Income Management Committee and the Capital Markets Origination Committee. From 1998 until 2005 he served as the Global Head of Loans and Leveraged Finance. He grew this business from a small second tier position to one of the largest, most successful loan and high yield businesses on Wall Street. In 2004 Citigroup displaced long time market leader CSFB as the most active underwriter of high yield bonds. Revenues grew significantly during this period, ultimately contributing over $1 billion annually. IFR named Citigroup Global Loan House of the Year five times during his tenure. In 2006 and 2007 he was co-head of Global Credit Markets leading a business with over one thousand employees around the world encompassing all of Citigroup’s credit trading and debt capital market groups with revenues in excess of $3 billion annually. 

During the financial crisis Mr. Leat helped Citigroup work through many challenging risk, regulatory and client issues. Significantly, in 2008 he completed the structured sale of $12 billion of leveraged finance assets for Citigroup. He successfully helped Citigroup and numerous clients during this period in restructuring many acquisition financings such as EMI, Clear Channel Communications, First Data Corporation, TXU, Hugo Boss/Valentino and Alltel to name a few. 

From 2009 through 2013 he was one of Citigroup’s most senior investment bankers, serving as Chairman of the Global Financial Sponsors Group, leading a group of bankers providing corporate finance services to the world’s largest private equity firms. Some of his closest relationships have been with firms such as Apollo, Blackstone, The Carlyle Group, Cerberus, KKR, Permira, TH Lee and TPG Capital, to name a few. He has led teams completing numerous IPOs, leveraged buyouts and recapitalizations including the IPO of the Carlyle Group. 

Mr. Leat began his career on Wall Street at The Chase Manhattan Corporation in their Capital Markets Group in 1985 where he ultimately became the head of their highly successful Syndications, Structured Sales and Loan Trading businesses. This group was on the cutting edge of the fast-developing loan market and Mr. Leat was one of a handful of market professionals associated with the development and creation of this now vibrant capital market. He initiated their bridge loan capabilities, raising the capital and risk managing Chase’s $1.6 billion Roebling Fund. He also created the first structured vehicle to invest in both leveraged loans and high yield bonds, Crescent MACH I. This transaction provided much of the analytical framework that underpinned the rapid development of the CLO marketplace. He left Chase after 12 successful years to join Salomon Brothers.

Mr. Leat is on the Board of Directors of Norwegian Cruise Lines, where he serves as Chairman of the Audit Committee and a member of the Compensation Committee. Norwegian is one of the leading cruise line companies in the world and trades on the NYSE under the symbol NCLH.

He is Chairman of the Board of Directors MidCap Financial, PLC, a middle market direct commercial lending business affiliated with Apollo Global Management. MidCap is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, with offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dublin and London and has a total capitalization of approximately $14 billion, and assets under management of over $22 billion.

Mr. Leat is Chairman of the Supervisory Board of MyMoneyBank, a retail and commercial bank headquartered in Paris, France. 

Mr. Leat is on the Supervisory Board of Hamburg Commercial Bank, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, where he also serves as Chairman of the Risk Committee.

He sits on the Board of Directors of TPG Pace Beneficial Financial Corp. and TPG Pace Tech Opportunities Corp. where he acts as Audit Committee Chair for each. Previously Mr. Leat served on the Board of Directors of TPG Pace Holdings, Paceline Holdings and TPG Pace Energy Holding Corp., each affiliated with TPG Capital, an alternative asset fund based in San Francisco, CA with in excess of $100 billion in assets under management.  

Previously Mr. Leat was Chairman of the Board of Directors of J.Crew Operating Corp, an American multi-brand, multi-specialty retailer offering an assortment of contemporary men’s, women’s and children’s apparel and accessories with revenues in excess of $2 billion. He lead the company through a successful in-court restructuring during the COVID-19 global pandemic. 

He served on the Board of Directors of Global Indemnity PLC, a Dublin based provider of property and casualty insurance from 2009 to 2015. It is listed in the United States under the symbol GBLI. He served on the Enterprise Risk, Nomination and Governance and Compensation Committees and was Chairman of the Audit Committee for three years. He was also previously on the Board of Directors of BAWAG P.S.K., Austria’s third largest bank, for four years, where he served as Chairman of both the Audit and Risk Committees. 

Mr. Leat is dedicated to many civic and philanthropic organizations. He is a member of Economic Club of New York and has served on the board of several charitable organizations. Currently he is a Trustee of the Parrish Museum of Art.

Mr. Leat, is a graduate of the University of Kansas, where he received his Bachelor of Science degree. He finished the Directors’ Consortium at Stanford Graduate School of Business in Palo Alto, California in the spring of 2019.  Mr. Leat was named a Distinguished Kansan in 2018 and was awarded the Sloan-Kettering Award of Merit in Business in 2019.

He is single, lives in Paris, France, Bridgehampton, New York and New York City and is an avid equestrian.