David Bouton and Joseph Dyckman

The challenge with superlatives is maintaining them, and over the years Citigroup’s grip on certain lending sectors has remained tight. 

Still the top affordable housing and conduit lender and a leader with data center and CMBS deals, Citigroup nonetheless scored significant marquee deals throughout 2025, including $3.05 billion for the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas and a $1.15 billion SASB refinancing of Atlantis Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Citigroup also financed trophy office assets like Brookfield’s 44-story 225 Liberty Street. 

“It’s easy to be a good lender in a robust market,” said David Bouton, who leads CRE finance alongside Joseph Dyckman. “It’s much more difficult when there isn’t as much of a market. That’s when we like to provide leadership and liquidity, not just for our clients, but for the market overall.”

Last year was an active one across the business, with $4.7 billion in conduit originations alone. Nearly every single pillar of the franchise grew last year. In fact, a theme for 2025 was Citigroup’s use of its own balance sheet to provide liquidity to clients, especially in office. Bouton said their contrarian view on office started a few years ago, and they’ve continued to provide backstops for big deals ever since. 

Citigroup also showed creativity within a space that’s becoming known for creative financing: data centers. Switch’s inaugural deal with Citigroup, worth $2.4 billion, was done during the market freeze caused by the emergence of Chinese AI model Deepseek.

“In other words, it wasn’t just another hyperscaler,” said Bouton. “They had a unique story about what their assets were. We had to come up with an investment thesis for the investors, and that’s where our expertise in the market really helped us through a difficult time.”

Citi also launched the first powered-shell data center SASB, and served as left lead for a $3.46 billion SASB financing for Blackstone’s QTS data center subsidiary last year. Especially notable since in 2021, Citi successfully underwrote and distributed the industry’s inaugural data center CMBS SASB, a $3.2 billion structured financing package that supported Blackstone’s take-private of QTS.

An incredibly balanced portfolio and internal support allows Citigroup to be agnostic in its financing strategy, and chase whatever solution makes the most sense. “Clients come to us with their very important signature transactions,” said Bouton. “But that’s sort of our DNA. We like to be innovative. We like to be creative, and we like to create liquidity.”