Citigroup, MF Global India emissions heads leave

LONDON: Citigroup's director of environmental products Garth Edward resigned from the bank on Thursday, he told on Friday.

Edward confirmed by telephone that he had left the US bank but would not comment further.
Edward was one of the early pioneers in the global market for greenhouse gas emissions trading, worth $144 billion in 2009 according to the World Bank. Edward joined Citi's London office in late 2007 to run its emissions trading division. Prior to that, Edward ran Shell's environmental products trading business. Digvijay Chauhan, MF Global's head of emissions markets in India, also left from the broker firm last week, a former colleague told Reuters on Friday.

An MF Global spokeswoman confirmed the move but would not comment further. Chauhan, formerly at clean energy project developers EcoSecurities, now owned by JP Morgan, was not immediately available for comment. MF Global's new chief executive said on May 20 that the firm would slash its workforce by up to 15 per cent after five straight quarters of losses.

The global recession coupled with uncertainty over the carbon market's future, fuelled by stalled efforts to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol and ongoing legislative delays to a US climate bill, has prompted several financial institutions to trim or shut down their emissions desks in the past two years.