The man who founded Citi’s transition management business nine years ago and built it into a near-monopoly resigned on Friday and will shortly move to a competitor.

Mark Levinson will take a three-month break before becoming managing director of execution services at Goldman Sachs JBWere, reporting to MD of the fixed income/currency/commodities division, Rhys Gwyn. Levinson will work with Mark Wills, executive director of the area, and Jonathan Brunello who is understood to be considering a move to Asia with the team. Levinson said that overseeing a package of services to institutional investors – not only transition management but prime broking and global clearing – was the “;fresh challenge”; he had been looking for. Market share in the transition management industry is (by its nature) difficult to calculate. However many observers estimate that Levinson’s Citi team, at its peak, handled 80 to 90 per cent of all third-party transitions by Australian institutions, although increased competition in recent years has moderated its dominance somewhat. Citi’s new head of transition management (recently renamed as Investment & Pension Services) is Michael Jackett-Simpson, a four year veteran of Levinson’s team with significant client-facing responsibilities. Levinson, whom observers say has unmatched super fund contacts, is not known to be taking any of his Citi colleagues with him to Goldman Sachs. Jackett-Simpson said Citi’s broker-dealer transition offering to clients would remain broadly unchanged, although the team – himself, Patrick Fanning, Andrew Rowe, Joe Cassel – had just been bolstered by the internal transfer of Michael Larkin, who “;has been brought on to help complete a certain skill set that lots of clients have been asking about.”; Most recently Larkin was head of product control for the equities, investment banking, global transaction services and corporate banking divisions. “;He brings with him broad product knowledge and an extensive understanding of the control environment,”; Jackett-Simpson said.