Citi
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UOB’s acquisition of Citi’s consumer assets in four southeast Asia markets strengthens its status in one of the world’s fastest growing regions. The Singapore lender’s CEO Wee Ee Cheong talks to Euromoney about why this matters and what comes next.
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Recently rebranded and expanded, Wealth at Work is Citi’s most dynamic generator of wealth revenues. Its leader, Naz Vahid, sits down in New York with Euromoney to explain her vision for its future.
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A move back up in rates is creating a PR battle among Wall Street banks. JPMorgan was punished for a cautious outlook, Goldman Sachs promoted strong fixed income trading results and Bank of America projected a Zen approach to rate moves.
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Citi Private Bank's chief investment office has adopted a distinctive strategy following the bank's transition to a more streamlined structure that involved shedding regional layers in Asia. This combines its global capabilities with in-depth local expertise.
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Citi’s chief investment office is at the heart of Citi Private Bank. And at the heart of that is David Bailin, the US bank’s chief investment officer.
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Asset managers and industry regulators face operational challenges around the tokenization of private assets.
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Luring star bankers from rivals – like Citi’s appointment of JPMorgan veteran Viswas Raghavan – can bring hidden costs beyond the expense of replacing stock options for the lucky new hire.
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Leading commercial banks are focusing on their approach to relationship management to reassure corporate customers that they are being listened to.
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Chief executive Jane Fraser has been true to her promise of a marquee hire to run Citi’s banking division, with the appointment today of JPMorgan veteran Viswas Raghavan. He brings a wealth of both transactional and operational management experience, but the symbolism of his arrival may be just as important.
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One of the first edicts handed down by Citi’s wealth head is to tell all private bankers to track and record client calls. It has ruffled feathers at the US lender, but if it transforms the unit into the powerhouse CEO Jane Fraser wants it to be, then so be it.
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No industry will be more overwhelmingly affected by new forms of artificial intelligence – both generative-AI and other technology to come – than banking. Costly but cost-effective, it is up to banks to make AI work for them, not the other way around.
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Citi’s head of Asia treasury and trade solutions has retired after 40 years at the US bank. He tells Euromoney what he would do if he were a 20-something graduate today, and why it helps to be both a specialist and a jack-of-all-trades in the industry now.
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They already dominate the investment banking business in Europe, and now the leading US banks have their eyes on an even bigger prize. They see their vast investments in the digital technology transforming payments and transaction services and their retained global presences as the keys to winning even greater revenues from Europe’s midsize corporates.
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The World Bank is issuing ‘outcomes’ bond structures for niche sustainability themes and with new financing mechanisms. Like blue bonds, they are probably going to need some rule-setting.
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The annual Senate quizzing of US big bank chief executives threw up all the usual favourite partisan arguments, but little else. If this is oversight, it often lacks insight.
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Andy Sieg is back again from Merrill Lynch, and has big plans for Citi’s new global wealth franchise.
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Jane Fraser, chief executive of Citi since March 2021, has a mighty task on her hands. Like so many of her predecessors, she faces the puzzle of how to articulate an identity for a bank that always seems to be trying to do too much at once. So far, she has focused on redefining the scope of the firm and most recently on adapting its structure to fit that. The hardest part – fixing the bank’s woeful returns – is still to come.
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Big banks are scrutinized on environmental, social and governance matters today as never before and they must often walk a tightrope between competing interests. Citi is no exception.
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Exiting consumer banking in a range of markets around the world was one of Jane Fraser's first steps when she became Citi’s chief executive. The immensely complex task would need the safest of hands.
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As Citi presses on with its consumer-banking exits around the world, the job of defining what its international network now represents falls to its newly appointed head of international, Ernesto Torres Cantú.
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Citi’s sale of its China consumer wealth portfolio to HSBC for $3.6 billion is a nuanced tale of two banks with increasingly different strategies. As HSBC tilts ever more toward Asia, Citi proves ever more inclined to see all financial services through a global prism.
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A Citi survey of family offices finds some unsurprising things to say about the worries of the wealthy – inflation, interest rates and geopolitics – but discovers a shocking lack of preparation for succession planning.
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Securities finance practitioners are taking a mix of approaches to managing cash, funding and liquidity in a shortened settlement cycle.
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It is tempting to conclude that Citi’s impressive suite of treasury management services, for which it wins the award of Latin America’s best bank for transaction services, is the result of the bank knowing that it really needs to excel in this area. Given the growth strategy being pursued by chief executive Jane Fraser, which has seen the bank pull out of many retail banking markets to focus on corporate and investment banking, a market-leading transaction services offering is imperative.
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The retrenchment that Citi has made in the retail markets of central America has clearly not impacted its dominance of corporate and investment banking in the region. It wins the award for central America’s best investment bank again this year.
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If an organization in Latin America – corporate, sovereign or multilateral – wants to raise finance, Citi will invariably be part of the conversation. The bank’s financing team, led by Adrian Guzzoni, head of debt capital markets for Latin America, and Marcelo Millen, head of equity capital markets for Latin America, has shown that Citi’s ability to access local and international sources of funding and to present options spanning debt, loans and equity is a compelling proposition for finance departments across the region.
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With the war in Ukraine adding to global volatility in capital markets, investment banking deal flow was weak in central and eastern Europe during 2022 and early 2023, especially for lower-rated names.
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Citi takes everything it does seriously, but there is a special place in its collective consciousness for transaction services. This often-sprawling area of financial services, which chief executive Jane Fraser calls the crown jewel of the bank, is the beating heart of all Citi stands for.
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Evidence of an ability to leverage networks across Africa and beyond has helped Citi win the title of Africa’s best bank for advisory this year. While the firm has a strong franchise in South Africa, the rest of the continent is now becoming more important as a growth market. This award is therefore largely thanks to the team led by chairman of investment banking for Middle East and Africa, Miguel Azevedo, and Claude-Stephanie Ngningha, Citi’s head of investment banking in Africa outside South Africa and Egypt.
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In investment banking, Citi continues to benefit from the combination of a leading global network and an on the ground presence in Africa that is much bigger than most other international firms.
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Citi’s transaction services bankers can be in no doubt of the firm’s commitment to their business. Chief executive Jane Fraser is on record calling the Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) division the crown jewel of the bank and she rarely misses an opportunity to refer to it. The bank invested $1 billion in technology for this business alone in 2022.
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Citi’s securities services business has put in an excellent year both in terms of new business and digital innovation.
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Citi’s crown jewels sparkle in a record-breaking year for the business.
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Citi’s refocused strategy is bearing fruit as growing corporate balance sheets position it for business.
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In some years this award is a close decision, with two or three banks vying for the prize. This wasn’t one of those years.
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Citi is the standout winner of the award for the region’s best bank for advisory in 2023. In a strong year for M&A, it was way ahead of the pack. It advised on 18 completed deals collectively worth $32.1 billion, giving it a 26.5% share of the market, according to data from Dealogic.
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Kevin Lam is to lead the Malaysian bank, becoming the second person within three years to step down as UOB’s TMRW digital head.
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The big transaction banks are becoming increasingly active in the B2B marketplace as they seek to cash in on corporate digital transformation.
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Relative winners after a year of interest rate hikes include Bank of America and Citigroup. Losers are led by regional US banks, while alternative asset managers argue that higher rates present a historic opportunity.
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With more than $740 billion in client assets in its global wealth management business, Citi embodies the modern-day financial behemoth.
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Citi’s decision to create a single wealth-management platform in early 2021, Citi Global Wealth (CGW), is bearing fruit.
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Citi’s Wealth at Work, which delivers wealth services to white-collar professionals in sectors from law and asset management to private equity, is less than two years old. Its founder and global head Naz Vahid talks to Euromoney about the concept and where the division can go from here.
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Restrictions on redundancies force out larger banks in Mexico from bidding for business.
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The bank is focusing on organic growth by acquiring retail clients and launching a private bank.
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A groundbreaking repo facility for African sovereign Eurobonds was completed in time for a debut trade as COP27 took place. The road to closing the deal was far from simple.
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This year has seen banks report markdowns on leveraged finance commitments and related exposures, something that is hardly surprising given what has happened to yields. But even with syndicates struggling to offload some high-profile big deals, the troubles seem oddly muted so far.
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Societe Generale has exited, and Citi is winding down in retail, but the two biggest remaining Western European players in Russia are also spending a lot of time working out their exposures and operations in the country.
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Amitabh Chaudhry seeks to elevate Axis from its strong position in India to a premium one. The purchase of Citi’s consumer finance business will help – but only if it can keep Citi’s customers.
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As European and Chinese banks scale back in Africa to cut costs and redeploy capital to core markets, Middle East lenders are happily jumping in to fill the gap, buying assets and putting more boots on the ground as bilateral trade between the regions increases.
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If you want to get ahead in investment banking it is time to hit the beach.
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Trading divisions at banks aren’t just offsetting slumping deal fees, they are also becoming more efficient. They could drive an upgrade in equity valuations.
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Citi’s strength across the capital markets, allied to an ability to put its balance sheet to good use with key clients, always put it in contention for the award for Africa’s best bank for financing.
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Citi’s commitment to its customers, to innovation and to unveiling new products that adapt to the shifting needs and expectations of corporates and regulators put it easily ahead of its rivals this year.
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One of the consequences of Citi’s withdrawal from local banking markets in Latin America is that the US bank is especially sensitive to any potential loss of market share in corporate debt financing in the affected countries.
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The two most active investment banks in the Caribbean region are Citi and JPMorgan. While it would seem natural to consider them competitors – and of course they are – it is striking how many deals there are in which they team up.
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In investment banking, deals were already becoming harder to do in central and eastern Europe before Russia invaded Ukraine, as interest rates began to creep up in the second half of 2021. Executing deals has since become even harder both because of the war and because of those rate rises.
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Now, hear us out. A year ago, we were griping about Citi’s decision to sell consumer businesses in a clutch of Asian markets. The only way it made sense, we argued, was if Citi put its money where its mouth is: deployed the freed capital into its wealth and institutional businesses in Asia and doubled down on that with tangible action, rather than the proceeds just drifting into some vague balance-sheet objective.
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It was a knife-edge decision between Citi, stronger in top-end cash management, and HSBC, stronger in trade, this year. Last year, we decided trade was the theme to reward in a Covid-blighted year; this year we looked at progress in payments, where Citi had an excellent year.
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Citi retains the award of best bank for financing – one of very few to be retained in a volatile year – for being good at everything it does across the financing space.