Stephen Trauber, the global head of energy for Citigroup Global Markets Inc., didn’t settle in Texas just to become a top financial adviser to the energy industry. Rather, he was married to a hometown Houston girl and wanted to balance her happiness with the grueling schedule of an investment banker.

“I wasn’t chasing energy. I was chasing Texas,” he told Midstream Business. “And it’s worked out great because one of the wonderful things about working in Texas is that most of your energy clients are here. It’s much easier to become a trusted adviser to people that you see frequently.”

Trauber began his career in 1988 with Credit Suisse First Boston in New York City, the “mother ship” of the investment banking world. In 1995, he was managing Morgan Stanley’s energy group in Houston, and in 2003, he was named the energy chief at UBS. During his work as UBS’ top energy dealmaker, Trauber brought in a reported $30 million in fees on a single deal when he advised Smith International in its $11 billion sale to Schlumberger Ltd.

A desire for growth

But during the height of the financial crisis and in its aftermath, many megabanks, including UBS, sustained losses and consequently tightened their focus. When Citi came knocking on his door with a desire to grow its energy business, Trauber was intrigued.

“Citi was looking to focus more on energy, put a lot more resources in energy to grow it and make energy a center of excellence. Citi has a phenomenal platform as far as the tools and geographic breadth it has available to its clients, so it was a natural fit,” he said.

But Trauber isn’t a one-man band, and he insisted that his team is a huge part of what he has to offer in the world of high-stakes energy investment banking. When he left UBS at the end of 2010, he took his energy team of about 20 bankers with him. As the man who led deals with the likes of companies from Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Apache Corp. to Valero Energy Corp. and Weatherford International, he had been dubbed a “rainmaker” in the financial press.

George Stein, managing director at Commodity Talent LLC in New York City, told Midstream Business matter-of-factly that there’s a reason behind Trauber’s reputation as a formidable power broker: “He gets the big deals.”

To be sure, revenue from Citi’s energy practice has more than doubled during the three years that Trauber has been at its helm. Among some of the highest-profile—and steepest dollar figure—deals has been Rosneft’s $58 billion takeover of TNK-BP and most recently, CNOOC Ltd.’s $15 billion acquisition of Nexen.

The go-to place

“He’s essentially, not just put Citi on the map, but he’s made [the bank] the place to go to,” Stein said. “Steve is a larger-than-life personality. He couples that with a formidable skill set of being able to see the opportunities, to persuade people that Citigroup—with its balance sheet, with its expertise in research and in deal execution—is the bank of choice.”

Not only does Trauber bring the deals, he has managed to lure a deep bench of talent to the bank. “As a result of Steve himself and the platform, they’ve been able to attract superior talent from banks whose managing directors before would’ve looked down their noses at Citigroup,” Stein said.

Still, the rainmaker moniker is one that Trauber shrugs off.

“I’m more like a conductor of a great orchestra,” he said. “We’ve got a great team. Not only great in terms of banking competency, but they’re unparalleled in terms of their relationship-building skills, just because of the kind of quality people that they are. When you put that together on a great platform, you get a great team and great performance.”

Growth in the midstream is among the more exciting recent opportunities ahead, he said. With a market capitalization close to 20 times the size it was a decade ago, Trauber said the sector is poised for significant growth and high levels of activity.

“With all of the rapid development of the shale activity, you’ve got to be able to get the product to market. All of that infrastructure had to be built out,” he said. “That’s required a lot of capital. It’s also meant a lot of companies growing rapidly and many new companies starting up and ultimately going public.”

Where the largest midstream companies of the previous decade had a market cap of $7 billion to $10 billion, today the likes of Kinder Morgan Inc. and Enterprise Products Partners LP are in the ballpark of $100 billion and growing. Shale plays in North Dakota, Ohio and Pennsylvania are underserved by existing infrastructure, which is a major opportunity for midstream companies.

“All of which requires capital,” Trauber explained. “And besides capital, it’s resulted in many new companies starting up, some of which were ultimately acquired by larger companies. Some of the larger companies have also acquired some of the existing mid-size companies, resulting in the immense amount of M&A [mergers and acquisitions] activity that we see is ongoing.”

Midstream consolidation

Consequently, consolidation is one of the important trends in midstream, he said.

“There are two ways to build your business. One is to grow it yourself, organically. The other way is to acquire it. If I’m not in the Utica Basin in Ohio, and I want to get in it, I can start it de novo, or I can acquire somebody who’s already there,” he said. “Oftentimes, the acquisition opportunity is more attractive than building it yourself.”

The already quick pace at Citi’s energy practice is gaining momentum. Last year’s overall revenue, estimated to be in excess of $1.5 billion, marked a record in Trauber’s 26 years of investment banking, and the firm is working at a clip ahead of that pace already in 2014. Akin to perhaps the most common issue challenging the energy industry, Citi isn’t struggling to find work. Rather, the struggle is in finding enough experienced people to execute it.

“We don’t have 100% market share, and there’s a lot of business that we don’t win—not because people don’t want to choose Citi—but because we don’t have enough people to cover it,” he said, adding, “We’re still actively looking to grow.”

Already more than 100 bankers strong, Citi wants to add to its energy practice at least six or seven more associates, a couple of vice presidents and two or three more managing directors in Houston. When Trauber brought his team of 20 to the fold, he almost doubled Citi’s energy bench at the time to 45 bankers.

As Trauber explained, Citi is operating in a robust external capital market environment with low interest rates, lots of capital available and a strong equity market.

“With the growth in energy, a substantial increase in our business is on the equity and debt-financing side, both in the investment grade and non-investment grade, and a tremendous uptick in M&A and A&D [acquisitions and divestitures] activity,” he said. “When you combine all of that activity, with leading market shares in each area, you end up compounding the overall growth impact, which is why we need all of these people.”

Staying busy

Many companies have learned to execute smaller transactions. However, much of Citi’s expertise is in larger, more complex transactions, Trauber said. And the workload at Citi isn’t expected to lighten any time soon.

“When you combine the highly talented bankers at Citi with the extensive global footprint of our firm with the size and strength of our balance sheet—we have capital, we want to lend money—and you add the broad distribution capabilities of this firm, both on the debt and the equity side and the strength of our commodities group—where other people are shrinking their group or getting out of the commodities business, we’re growing our commodities business—when you integrate all that together with senior management support, [Citi] has everything that we need to be successful,” he said.

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