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.
News
WorkGenius acquires US based JBC, a staffing company
Work Genius, New York
June 8, 2022
From the article:
‘WorkGenius, a freelance technology company has acquired US based JBC, a staffing company, in a landmark deal that together, will aim to transform the freelance staffing industry through a combination of proven operations, great people along with innovative cutting edge technology.
The combined company will be close to $100m in revenue, with EBITDA in the high teens and more than 250 employees. The company grows north of 50% YoY, driven by a tenured team, unique technology product, strong trends of digitalization in the human capital space, and a shift to flexible workforce models…
…Chad Leat, former Vice Chair of CitiGroup, joins existing equity investors including John Jahr and Axel Sven Springer. Investcorp BDC and CION Invest Corp provide the debt facility and also invested in the equity…’
Mickey Drexler Leaves J. Crew
Chain Store Age (The Business of Retail)
Marianne Wilson, January 17, 2019
From the article:
‘…J.Crew Group announced that Millard “Mickey” Drexler, chairman and former CEO of the company, has retired to devote his time to the development of Drexler Ventures LLC, which invests in and advises emerging brands, including Outdoor Voices and Warby Parker. He will be succeeded as J. Crew chairman by Chad Leat, effective immediately.
Leat, who has served as a director of J.Crew since January 2017, is a retired vice chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup with nearly 30 years of markets and banking experience. […]
[…] In a statement, new chairman Leat said that his priorities will be to ensure that the J.Crew brand “moves quickly to capitalize on recent momentum and to support Madewell’s growth towards becoming a one billion dollar brand, while also working with the board to identify strong, permanent leadership to guide the company in its next chapter.” […] ‘
Chad Leat Receives Award of Merit
Delta Upsilon
Sloan-Kettering Award of Merit in Business
2019 Leadership Institute
From the article:
‘Delta Upsilon’s Awards of Merit are presented to esteemed members and friends of the Fraternity who have exhibited a devotion to Delta Upsilon, as well as excellence or notoriety within their profession. The awards get their name from the Fraternity’s historical tie to our Founders’ description: “the only superiority that we acknowledge is the superiority of merit.” Awards are then named for outstanding DU alumni in that particular field.‘
‘During the 2019 Leadership Institute, Brother Chad Leat, Kansas ’78, was honored with the Sloan-Kettering Award of Merit in Business. This award is named after Alfred P. Sloan, Technology 1895, and Charles Kettering, Ohio State 1904, who were philanthropists and long-time executives with General Motors.[…]‘
Designer Alvise Orsini Crafts a Stunning Art-Filled Penthouse in Paris
Galerie
by Ian Phillips; Photography by Dylan Thomas
August 23, 2018
From the article:
‘”Everyone I meet in Paris has a story about this apartment,” rejoices its American owner, Chad Leat, a retired Wall Street executive. Some claim the French writer Françoise Sagan used it as the setting for a chapter in one of her novels. Others refer to a movie in which actress Catherine Deneuve’s character looks up at the top-floor residence and asks her lover, “Mais qui habite là?” (“But who lives there?”)’…
‘…Leat acquired the two-bedroom flat from a friend who had renovated it twice with esteemed architect and designer Joseph Dirand, who employed an aesthetic that was too austere for the new American owner’s taste. “I didn’t want to mess with the layout or architecture, because it’s perfection in my view,” says Leat. “But I found the stark decor a little dated.” So he enlisted Orsini—whom he’d met through the designer’s husband, the Belgian-born fashion executive Geoffroy van Raemdonck—to make the apartment “warmer and with more Parisian flair,” as Leat puts it. […] ‘
BLOOMBERG: WALL STREETERS IN THE HAMPTONS TURN OUT FOR LEAT AT PARRISH GALA
by Amanda L. Gordon
July 16, 2018
published in Bloomberg
From the article:
‘Chad Leat’s Wall Street friends followed him to the Parrish Art Museum Saturday night to see him honored by CNN’s Don Lemon.
Photographer: Amanda Gordon/Bloomberg
Among the guests at the Midsummer Party benefiting the Herzog & de Meuron-designed museum in Watermill, New York, were Michael Carr, co-head of M&A at Goldman Sachs; a sunburnt Tom Maheras (“I was on a boat all day”) of Tegean Capital; and Jim Zelter, co-president of Apollo Global Management. The event raised about $1.3 million.
“Chad was our leveraged-finance maven,” Zelter said, adding they’d worked together for years at Salomon Smith Barney and Citigroup. “He’s on a couple of my boards.”’…
Kansas graduate gives $1 million for LGBTQ students
AP News
March 3, 2018
From the article:
‘The University of Kansas will use a $1 million gift to provide scholarships to LGBTQ students. The university announced Thursday that 60-year-old Chad Leat donated the gift this week to his alma mater. Leat, of New York City, is retired vice chairman of global banking at Citigroup.’
KU alumnus announces $1 million scholarship gift to support LGBTQ students
The University of Kansas, KU Endowment
March 1, 2018
From the article:
‘Chad Leat, of New York, N.Y., retired vice chairman of global banking at Citigroup and University of Kansas graduate, announced a $1 million scholarship gift commitment in support of LGBTQ students at KU during a visit this week to his alma mater.‘
‘“Being able to provide opportunities to diverse students, and LGBT students in particular, means so much to me,” Leat said. “This gift will establish this scholarship as a much larger and more meaningful investment in the LGBT community here at KU for a long time.” […] ‘
Tony Ingrao and Randy Kemper Design a Modern and Minimal New York Apartment
Architectural Digest
by Dan Shaw; photography by Nikolas Koenig
March 9, 2017
From the article:
‘When Chad Leat was considering whether to buy a full-floor apartment in one of architect Richard Meier’s sleek glass towers in Manhattan’s West Village, he was excited and terrified in equal measure. “The great attraction was the Hudson River view and the fact that it was raw space, so we could create something from scratch,” says Leat, an investment banker and philanthropic fundraiser. But it was also counterintuitive for a lover of contemporary art to acquire a home without walls for hanging his collection—so he consulted with architect Preston T. Phillips before making a bid, to see what might be done. “I asked Preston, ‘Is it possible to find a way not to mess with the apartment and yet still show my art?’” Leat recalls. “I wanted to keep it open and loftlike, because I am more of a casual kind of guy.” ‘
Apollo taps veteran Citi banker Leat as consultant -sources
Reuters
by Greg Roumeliotis
April 24, 2014
From the article:
‘Chad Leat, a retired Citigroup Inc executive who helped finance some of the world’s largest leveraged buyouts, is now working as a consultant for former client Apollo Global Management LLC, people familiar with the matter said.
Leat’s new role underscores the appeal of alternative asset managers, such as Apollo, to current and former investment bankers as regulators scrutinize or crack down on many of the activities of Wall Street banks.…
…During Leat’s tenure, Citigroup underwrote loans for mega-deals such as KKR & Co LP’s $26 billion acquisition of payments processing company First Data Corp. It also was involved in the $45 billion takeover by KKR, TPG Capital LP and Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s private equity arm of the now near-bankrupt Texas power company Energy Future Holdings.…
…Apollo is likely to tap Leat’s fixed income as well as leveraged buyout expertise. The New York-based firm had about $161 billion of assets under management as of the end of December, of which $49.9 billion was in private equity and $100.9 billion in credit.’