In spring 2022, as junior investment bankers across the industry rebelled against punishing workweeks, Citigroup unveiled what seemed a progressive, forward-thinking initiative: a gleaming outpost on Spain’s Costa del Sol offering work-life balance for up-and-coming dealmakers Sun, sea, spreadsheets. What a brilliant idea!
Well, the dream is gone, as MainFT reported last Thursday:
Citigroup is closing its beachside Málaga office less than three years after opening the hub to offer junior investment bankers a better work-life balance.
The US lender has told staff that it will close the unit in the southern Spanish city, cutting a handful of jobs and relocating other employees to London and Paris, the bank confirmed in a statement to the Financial Times.
Citi opened the office in 2022 at the height of a post-pandemic battle for talent in the financial services industry, and at a time when banks were facing criticism for failing to prevent staff burnout.
The Wall Street bank had hoped to set itself apart from its competitors by offering junior staff eight-hour days and work-free weekends on the Costa del Sol — a far cry from the punishing seven-day working weeks typically demanded of young investment bankers in New York and London.
However, Citi said on Wednesday that it was closing the office as part of its strategy to “simplify the firm and make improvements to how we operate”.
When the Málaga venture was announced in 2022, Citi’s senior investment banking leadership insisted that this was “not a gimmick”. Yet even then, most bankers — especially the Spanish ones in London and Madrid — ridiculed it as an expensive PR exercise fuelled more by sangria than strategic alignment. It was the kind of initiative that industry professionals don’t take seriously.
While it is easy to scoff at the idea, there was a commendable logic behind it. Málaga provided Citi access to a steady pipeline of talented graduates from less prominent business schools — candidates who might otherwise be overlooked by top-tier firms. Graduates from elite institutions typically have more options and often choose higher-ranked competitors over Citi. By opening a satellite office outside traditional financial hubs, Citi positioned itself to attract capable, ambitious students from local and regional schools that firms like Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley seldom approach. Málaga also offered practical advantages — notably, lower operating costs and strong transport links to Madrid and broader Europe. The lifestyle benefits were also expected to be a significant draw.
For almost three decades, Citi has strived to close the gap between itself and the top tier of investment banks. Despite exceptional rainmakers on its roster, the bank continues to trail industry leaders in marquee investment banking products. Rather than repeatedly emulating Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, it makes strategic sense to try something different.
So why, just three years later, is the Málaga experiment being shut down and erased from Citi’s global footprint?
Of course, a high-profile initiative such as this was bound to generate internal tensions, and both office politics and the financial pressures of the current downturn likely played a role in its demise. But at a deeper level, the venture may have been doomed from the start, because in this industry, geography is more than just a backdrop. Where you are based shapes your access, your visibility, and your proximity to decision makers. It determines whom you run into, what deals cross your desk, and how often you’re invited into the room where the real conversations happen.
From the very beginning, the Málaga hub struggled with a perception problem. And in investment banking, perception matters — a lot. Internally, despite the rhetoric around work-life balance, the culture still celebrates hard work and visible hustle. Externally, clients are often uneasy with the idea of their bankers enjoying a relaxed, beachside lifestyle. Perhaps if Citi had chosen a less sun-soaked, more conventional location, the optics might have been more favourable.
The reality also diverged from the pitch. The Málaga hub promised less grind and more sunshine, but in practice, it delivered professional isolation and irrelevance. With few clients in the region and even fewer senior leaders present, the office became a satellite outpost of junior bankers logging 70-90 hours per week — for roughly half the pay of their peers in Madrid or London.
The bespoke and relationship-driven nature of investment banking would have made it especially difficult to delegate strategic or high-value work to a remote team. While grunt work is unavoidably a big part of the job, no front-office banker wants to feel like outsourced resource — akin to an offshore team tasked overnight with running comps or basic research. Unsurprisingly, many in Málaga requested transfers to core dealmaking centres. When those opportunities failed to materialise, morale reportedly plummeted.
Citi had tried to market a lifestyle but missed a more fundamental industry truth: people don’t enter investment banking for wellness, but for growth. This is especially true for driven young professionals hailing from non-elite institutions. Long hours are expected, even embraced, so long as they lead to development opportunities, mentorship and marketable experience. Málaga likely offered little of that: no managing directors to champion careers, no impromptu interactions with clients, no in-person visibility with senior leadership.
The Málaga gambit also reflected a misunderstanding of about how investment banks operate. Hedge fund managers can work from far-flung locations because performance is measured in returns, not presence. But banking runs on trust, nuance, face time (not FaceTime), and relationship capital. A managing director might pass through Málaga on occasion or find it a useful temporary base en route to a weekend in Sotogrande. But overall, if you’re away from the action, you end up subsisting on the scraps that no one else wants.
This is not to suggest that a remote future for investment banking is impossible. Across Europe and North America, there are corporate finance boutiques that operate lean, remote models — partners choosing lifestyle over location, juniors logging in from anywhere, and the occasional rented space in Mayfair to maintain appearances. This set-up can work, up to a point. But even then, it does not scale beyond a handful of professionals and a limited number of deals each year. It’s certainly not viable for a global institution like Citi, where centralisation, compliance, and co-ordination are core to the operating model. Despite the argot of agility, major investment banks remain, at their core, command-and-control enterprises.
The episode also reflects a broader shift in workplace dynamics within finance. In the 2020-2021 deal frenzy, junior bankers had bargaining power. They demanded and received concessions. But with the slowdown in deal flow and the return of lay-offs to the agenda, the pendulum has swung back, as it always does. Perks are being pulled. The old rules and norms are reasserting themselves. The Empire is striking back.
Ultimately, Málaga never aligned with the operational realities of large investment banks. The idea was interesting and unconventional — but likely too radical to steer a supertanker like Citigroup in a new direction.
