Citi’s treasury and trade solutions (TTS) business has named Sumanta Panigrahi as its head of trade and working capital solutions (TWCS) for Asia-Pacific and as Thus De Silva its head of commercial cards for the region.
In his new role, Panigrahi, who will be based in Hong Kong, will be responsible for working with Citi’s regional client, product and country business partners to grow the TWCS business in Asia and continue to deliver the bank’s global product capabilities to clients even more effectively.
Asia-Pacific continues to be an important region for the TWCS business, and the bank says it is focused on growing its business and market share among its corporate and commercial bank clients.
Panigrahi, who joined the bank in 2000, has worked in TTS in India, London and Hong Kong. He was most recently head of Asia-Pacific export and agency finance where he played an instrumental role in driving growth within the business and made particularly noticeable strides with Citi’s commercial bank business. His expanded remit also included responsibility for TWCS Asia-Pacific functions, including in-business risk and control.
He will report to Chris Cox, global head of TWCS, and Rajesh Mehta, the bank’s Asia-Pacific head of TTS.
De Silva, who is based in Singapore, has held the position of head of commercial cards for Asia-Pacific on an interim basis since 2022, and will continue to be responsible for driving growth with Asia clients across the market network, as well as pioneering innovative business-to-business (B2B) flows and continuing to enhance the travel and expense proposition. He will also have the critical task of ensuring exemplary client experience in all client segments, as the bank continues to grow and invest in its Asia commercial cards business.
De Silva joined Citi in 2008 as part of the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) commercial cards team as an onboarding manager. Since then, he has held various roles across sales and client executive teams in EMEA before moving to Singapore in 2016 to build and lead the client executive team for Asia-Pacific commercial cards. In 2020, he joined the Asia-Pacific commercial cards product team as the B2B product head for the region, tasked with growing B2B non-travel flows.
He will report to Gonca Latif-Schmitt, global head of commercial cards, and to Mehta, the region’s TTS head, as well.
