Citigroup's Stella Choe sees banking inroads in Australia

Whether pulling together a complex leveraged finance deal, fly fishing in Mongolia or organising corporate partnerships for UNICEF, Stella Choe – now at Citigroup – has covered a lot of ground in her 17-year career.

During the fallout from the global financial crisis in 2009, when leveraged finance markets were all but frozen, she found herself in a predicament. Private equity behemoth KKR & Co had its sights on Oriental Brewery, South Korea's second largest brewery, and would need to access finance to help fund the $US1.8 billion ($2.3 billion) acquisition.