By Leila Abboud and Sophie Sassard
PARIS/LONDON, March 19 (Reuters) - HSBC, Europe'sbiggest bank, has hired former Citi banker Daniel Bailey to leadits global telecom, media and technology (TMT) team, two peoplewith direct knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday.
He is the latest in a series of high-profile hires by HBSCin the past few months as rivals have stepped up job cuts attheir investment banking businesses.
Bailey had been in the same role at Citigroup since2006 and left as part of cost cuts the U.S. bank is making inresponse to the weak economic climate and due to tougherregulation.
Bailey worked on a number of M&A transactions in TMT andother sectors over 17 years, including Mannesmann's $33bn acquisition of Orange in 1999 and Vodafone's $11bnacquisition of a 67 percent stake in Hutchison Essar in 2007.
He will start at HSBC in April, one of the people said.
Both HSBC and Bailey declined to comment.
In January, HSBC recruited Nomura's William Barteras head of UK global banking in March in a newly createdposition. Barter worked on the Xstrata/Glencore deal,the biggest takeover of 2012, after joining Nomura in August2009 from Citigroup, where he was managing director in the UKinvestment banking team from 2007 to 2009.
This month, the bank also hired Herman Deetman as head ofutilities for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) fromDeutsche Bank. Deetman, a well-respected dealmakeramong his peers, advised blue chip companies such as Centrica and Germany's RWE.
In September last year, HSBC added five bankers to its AsiaPacific natural resources team, with hires from UBS, Australianbank Macquarie, RBS and local private equityfirm Actis.
A month later, it hired Paul Connolly from Macquarie as headof oil and gas for EMEA.
HSBC is in the last year of a three-year restructuring inwhich is has cut more than 30,000 jobs.