Commerzbank, the German investment bank, has poached Simon Edrich, one of the City of London's top utilities analyst, from Citigroup in attempt to revive its flagging research team after its recent bout of job culling.

Citigroup confirmed that Edrich, who was ranked second in the 2001 Thomson Extel survey of leading individual utilities analysts in 2001, had resigned from its investment banking operation Schroder Salomon Smith Barney (SSSB) and gone to Commerzbank.