() is a major ,
2007
Citigroup formed on .
The History of began with the founding of '''City Bank of New York''', which was chartered by . The company's name was changed to '''The National City Bank of New York''' in
1865 after the joining the new U.S. national banking system, and it became the largest American bank by
1895 . It became the first contributor to the
Federal Reserve Bank Of New York in
1913 , and the following year it inaugurated the first overseas branch of a U.S. bank in
Buenos Aires . The
1918 purchase of U.S. overseas bank '''International Banking Corporation''' helped it become the first American bank to surpass $1 billion in assets, and it became the largest commercial bank in the world in
1929 . As it grew, the bank became a leading innovator in financial services, becoming the first bank to offer
Compound Interest on
Saving s (1921);
Unsecured Personal Loans (1928); customer
Checking Accounts (1936) and the negotiable
Certificate Of Deposit (1961).
The bank changed its name to in
1955 , which was shortened to '''First National City Bank''' on the 150th anniversary of the company's foundation in
1962 . The company organically entered the leasing and credit card sectors, and its introduction of
USD Certificates Of Deposit in
London marked the first new negotiable instrument in market since
1888 . Later to become
MasterCard , the bank introduced its ''First National City Charge Service''
Credit Card - popularly known as the "Everything card" - in
1967 .
During the mid-
1970s , under the leadership of
CEO Walter Wristen, First National City Bank (and its holding company First National City Corporation) was renamed as , N.A. (and '''Citicorp''', respectively). Shortly afterward, the bank launches the Citicard, which pioneered the use of 24-hour
ATM s. As the bank's expansion continued, the '''
Diners Club ''' credit card company was purchased in
1981 .
John S. Reed was elected CEO in
1984 , and Citi became a founding member of the
CHAPS clearing house in London. Under his leadership, the next 14 years would see Citibank become the largest bank in the United States, the largest issuer of credit cards and charge cards in the world, and expand its global reach to over 90 countries.
Travelers Group, at the time of merger, was a diverse group of financial concerns that had been brought together under . Two years later, Weill mastered the buyout of - a conglomerate that had already bought
Life Insurer '''A L Williams''' as well as
Stock Broker '''
Smith Barney '''. The new company took the Primerica name, and employed a "
Cross-selling " strategy such that each of the entities within the parent company aimed to sell each other's services. Its non-financial businesses were
Spun-off .
In
September 1992 , who had suffered from poor
Real Estate investments and sustained significant losses in the aftermath of
Hurricane Andrew , formed a strategic alliance with Primerica that would lead to its amalgamation into a single company in
December 1993 . With the acquisition, the group became '''Travelers Inc.''' and property and casualty, and life and annuities underwriting capabilities were added to the business. Meanwhile, the distinctive Travelers red umbrella logo, which was also acquired in the deal, was applied to all the businesses within the newly named organization. During this period, Travelers acquired '''Shearson Lehman''' - a retail brokerage and asset management firm that was headed by Weill until 1985 - and merged it with Smith Barney. Finally, in
November 1997 , '''Travelers Group''' (which had been renamed again in April 1995), made the $9 billion deal to purchase '''
Salomon Brothers ''', a major
Bond Trader and
Investment Bank .
At the time of the merger between Citicorp and Travelers,
Sandy Weill was the chairman of Travelers and
John Reed was the Chairman of Citicorp. Under the auspices of creating a one-stop shop for insurance and banking products, the merger became a takeover by Travelers shortly thereafter. The two CEOs could not have been more different in management style and their paths to the top. Initially setup as co-CEOs, within two years of the merger John Reed was no longer with Citigroup. Of note, roughly at the time of the merger, Sandy Weill's compensation was on the top 10 list for CEOs, while John Reed's compensation was considered one of the top 10 for being the most accurate reflection of performance for pay.
The merger took place in 1998. This was illegal because the remaining provisions of the
Glass-Steagall Act (
Legislation stemming from the
United States ' Great Depression era) did not allow
Bank s to merge with
Insurance underwriters. Chuck Prince and his team of lawyers, studying the law, found that the Federal Reserve could grant the companies a two year trial period before they would have to divest the insurance underwriting business. The CEOs thought that they could ''change'' the law before the expiration date. The law was finally changed in
1999 when Glass-Steagall was invalidated by the passing of the
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act . Ironically, Citigroup eventually did, of its own will, divest almost all its insurance underwriting businesses due to the failed extraction of synergies from the two companies' merger . See article from Fortune Magazine in March 2000 entitled “Reed: Reflections on a Culture Clash”.
In order to convince Citicorp to merge, Weill proposed a structure of co-CEOs, consisting of himself and John Reed. This strategy was denounced immediately by many in the press and many research analysts as being unworkable. Former
Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was brought in as a moderating influence between Weill and Reed, but conflicts within the company eventually led to Reed being forced out (though Rubin remains). In addition, three co-CEO's (Jamie Dimon and Deryck Maughan from Travelers, and Victor Menezes from Citicorp) were placed in charge of the corporate and investment bank, while two co-CEO's were placed in charge of the consumer group. This was dubbed "The Noah's ark school of management" by the press, and did not last long.
The Travelers' management attempted to implement its culture of cost cutting and cross selling into Citigroup. Citibank retail bankers were instructed to get securities and insurance licensed in order to sell mutual funds and annuities. US retail banking, however, never became a major focus for the company. Todd Thompson, CFO, explained that "the retail branches are mostly a deposit gathering operation used to fund other, higher return, areas". At the present time, its different consumer divisions are not as integrated as other financial institutions, with each one primarily running as a stand-alone monoline.
The corporate and investment had a more difficult time integrating. There was infighting between corporate bankers and investment bankers, as to who would be the primary relationship point of contact with a customer. Conflicts between the tri-CEOs (including a drunken skirmish between Dimon and Maughan at a company retreat) led to the ousting of Jamie Dimon.
The company soon acquired Associates First Capital, the largest consumer finance company, and
Banamex , the largest bank in Mexico. This was controversial in Mexico: at the time the press there were worried that Mexico's largest banks would all become "branch offices for foreign competitors". Bombs were placed in branches in violent protest.
The company spun off its Travelers Property and Casualty insurance underwriting business. The spin off was prompted by the insurance unit's drag on Citigroup stock price because Traveler's earnings were more seasonal and vulnerable to large disasters. It was also difficult to sell this kind of insurance directly to customers since most industrial customers are accustomed to purchasing insurance through a broker.
The Travelers Property Casualty Corporation merged with The St. Paul Companies Inc. in 2004 forming
The St. Paul Travelers Companies . Citigroup retained the life insurance and annuities underwriting business. However, by 2005 Citigroup decided to sell its life insurance underwriting division to
MetLife for the same reasons. Citigroup still heavily sells all forms of insurance, but it no longer underwrites insurance.
Despite their divesting Traveler's Insurance, Citigroup retained Travelers' signature red umbrella logo as its own until which renamed itself . Citigroup also decided to adopt the corporate brand "Citi" for itself and virtually all its subsidiaries, except Primerica and Banamex.
On April 11, 2007 Citigroup said it will eliminate 17,000 jobs, or about 5 percent of its workforce, in a broad restructuring designed to cut costs and bolster its long underperforming stock.
Citigroup to Slash 17,000 jobs . Yahoo News,
April 11 ,
2007 .
The tracks the underwriting and M&A segment of that in more detail.
2003 global (except Retail Banking) market share:
- Capital Mrkts. & Banking: 10%
- Consumer Finance: 6%
- Private Client Services: 5%
- US Retail Banking: 4%
- Transaction Services: 2%
- Private Bank: 2%
Citigroup and its predecessor companies use the "diversified
Financial Services business model" first invented by
Prudential in the late seventies. Simply put, this model attempts to conglomerate many types of finance companies, such as stock brokers, banks, insurance companies, and others. This is done because each of those businesses do better or worse at different times of the
Business Cycle , and so owning all of them balances things out and creates in theory less earnings volatility. This is also done because customers usually use many different kinds of financial products and attempting to convince them to use more products from the same company sells more products more cheaply, compared to those separate companies strictly selling products on their own.
During the era of Sandy Weill, much of Citigroup and predecessor's efforts were focused on acquisitions. Much of the efforts were focused in the stock brokerage and investment banking areas, and most of the acquisitions were companies which had recently had problems and were selling at a low price. After the acquisition, the management team would usually engage in aggressive cost cutting to build up cash for the next deal.
The present CEO, Chuck Prince, has said "the day of the transformative deal (merger) is over". This is thought to refer to mega deals like the Citicorp/Travelers merger, as Citigroup continues to acquire. The focus of the company though, is said to have changed to organic revenue growth, that is selling more products instead of focusing on acquisitions and cost cutting alone to increase profit.
Citigroup's 2005 sale of the remainder of Travelers Insurance to MetLife was described by the press as the death knell of the bank-insurance cross-selling model. This is a false analysis though, as Citigroup continues to cross sell insurance, but no longer underwrites it. This focus on selling almost all kinds of financial products, but not necessarily "manufacturing them", is also what prompted Citigroup to recently trade its mutual fund business to Legg Mason in return for more stockbrokers.
, New York]]
Citigroup's most famous office building is the
Citigroup Center , a diagonal-roof skyscraper located in
East Midtown ,
Manhattan ,
New York City , which despite popular belief is not the company's headquarters building. Citigroup has its headquarters across the street in an anonymous-looking building at 399
Park Avenue (the site of the original location of the City National Bank). The headquarters is outfitted with nine luxury dining rooms, with a team of private chefs preparing a different menu for each day. The management team is on the third and fourth floors above a Citibank branch.
Smith Barney leases a building in the
TriBeCa neighborhood in Manhattan, the former headquarters of the Travelers Group and famous for its red umbrella sculpture.
Strategically, all of Citigroup's New York City real estate, excluding the company's Smith Barney division and Wall Street trading division, lies along the
New York City Subway 's
IND Queens Boulevard Line , served by the and '''
V ''' trains. Consequently, the company's Midtown buildings—including 666 Fifth Avenue, 399 Park Avenue, 485 Lexington, 153 East 53rd Street (Citigroup Center), and
Citicorp Building in
Long Island City, Queens , are all no more than two stops away from each other. In fact, every company building lies above or right across the street from a subway station served by the or '''
V '''.
, Chicago]]
Chicago also plays home to an architectural beauty operated by Citigroup.
Citicorp Center has a series of curved archways at its peak, and sits across the street from major competitor
ABN AMRO 's
ABN AMRO Plaza . It has a host of retail and dining facilities serving thousands of
Metra customers daily via the
Ogilvie Transportation Center .
,
Canary Wharf , London]]
Citigroup is divided into three major business groups: Global Consumer, Global Wealth Management, and Corporate and Investment Banking. It also includes one stand-alone business, Citigroup Alternative Investments.
The comprises three sub-divisions: Cards (
Credit Card s),
Consumer Finance , and
Retail Banking . The credit card business on average delivers about 40% of the profits of this group. Citigroup is the largest provider of credit cards in the world, a position long held by Citicorp, and increased by many acquisitions of card portfolios. It provides credit cards in many countries even where it doesn't have branches, and advertises directly on TV and by direct mail. The Consumer Finance Division (called Citifinancial) accounts for about 20% of the consumer group's profits. This division engages in the controversial practice of high interest rate lending to people with bad credit histories, called "loan sharking" or "predatory lending" by critics. Although this was the core of the corporation from which other divisions were acquired, most of the size, stores, and global reach of this division came from the takeover of
Associates First Capital . Citifinancial is now the largest consumer finance company in the world.
The final division is the retail bank. This division consists of the normal retail branch system that banks are most known for. This goes by the brand name
Citibank . Citibank is the third largest retail bank in the United States, and it has branches in countries throughout the world. The biggest part of retail banking however is
Banamex , the largest bank in Mexico, which Citigroup owns. Overall the Global Consumer group contributes more than half of all the profits for Citigroup. If it were a separate company, it would still be in the top ten most profitable companies in the world.
The (CIB) division consists of three subgroups: Global Markets, Global Banking, and Global Transaction Services (GTS). This division essentially handles large corporate
Cash Management ,
Trade , lending, and
Investment Banking services. Citigroup's investment bank is one of the largest, frequently topping many
League Table s. CIB does not engage in as much
Proprietary Trading (stock and bond speculation) as other investment banks do.
The division is composed of The
Citigroup Private Bank ,
Smith Barney , and Citigroup Investment Research. The Citigroup Private Bank provides banking and investment services to high net worth individuals, private institutions, and law firms. Smith Barney is the second largest stock broker in the world.
The (CAI) group is an alternative investments platform that manages assets across five classes: private equity, hedge funds, structured products, managed futures, and real estate. Essentially it offers various funds or separate accounts that utilize alternative investment strategies, as opposed to the mainstream mutual funds that it recently sold to
Legg Mason . These kinds of funds are not as commoditized as normal mutual funds, and products such as "structured products" are hybrid debt/equity/derivative issuances underwritten by its Investment Banking division. It offers over eighty investment products to institutions and qualified individual investors. Around half the group's profits come from Citigroup Venture Capital International (CVCI), a subdivision of CAI.
as of February 20, 2006
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- Michael Armstrong , Retired Chairman, Hughes , AT&T and Comcast
- Alain Belda , Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Alcoa
- George David , Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, United Technologies Corporation
- Kenneth T. Derr , Chairman, Retired, Chevron Corporation
- John M. Deutch , Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute Of Technology , Retired CIA director
- Roberto Hernández Ramírez , Chairman, Banco Nacional De México
- Ann Jordan , Consultant
- Andrew N. Liveris , President and Chief Executive Officer, The Dow Chemical Company
- Dudley Mecum , Managing Director, Capricorn Holdings LLC 1
- Anne Mulcahy , Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Xerox
- Richard D. Parsons , Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Time Warner
- Charles Prince , Chief Executive Officer, Citigroup
- Judith Rodin , President, Rockefeller Foundation
- Robert E. Rubin , Chairman of the Executive Committee and Member of the Office of the Chairman, Citigroup
- Franklin A. Thomas , Consultant, TFF Study Group
- Sanford I. Weill , Retired Chairman, Citigroup
in
Sydney ]]
Citigroup has experienced several significant business issues. Some of these are in specific businesses and are shared amongst other businesses within that industry, while some result from a conflict or collusion between different divisions of Citigroup. This second type of scandal have caused some to call into question the "financial supermarket" aspect of Citigroup.
Citigroup acquired the largest
Consumer Finance company,
Associates First Capital , in 2000. Associates was already under attack for what were called "
Predatory Lending " practices, specifically the selling of single premium
Credit Insurance . Upon being acquired the same attacks were turned towards Citigroup, who stopped the practice of selling the single premium
Credit Insurance , and instituted other changes. In the end the company was fined for the former practices. The present combined consumer finance division, called CitiFinancial, continues to share in the general controversy over consumer finance. In May 2004, CitiFinancial was fined $70 million by the U.S. Federal Reserve, for continued predatory lending (described in detail in
Inner City Press' Weekly Citigroup Watch Report ).
Citigroup and other investment banks were accused of having struck secret deals with companies that said that the bank's
Stock Research division would rate that company a "Buy" if it would do
Investment Banking with that division. Implicated by that scandal was
Analyst Jack Grubman . This scandal led to some wondering if the financial services conglomerate concept would lead to conflicts of interest such as this. The premise of this question however, is considered by some to be somewhat flawed insofar as research companies have almost always been owned by investment banks, even before the repeal of Glass-Steagal. The firm eventually paid the largest fine in the "
Global Settlement " with the state, resulting from conflicts of interest between research and investment banking at Salomon Smith Barney.
To help put investors at ease, Citigroup hired one of its most outspoken critics,
Sallie Krawcheck , to head Smith Barney (now a pure stock brokerage division), which was separated from the investment bank within the corporate structure. It dropped the "Salomon" from the name, as this name historically denoted investment banking.
Citigroup was accused of helping
Enron and other companies hide their losses by loaning money to those companies in a special way that would reduce liabilities visible on the
Balance Sheet . In May 2004 the company agreed to pay $2.65 billion, or $1.64 billion after tax, to settle a
Class Action Lawsuit brought on behalf of purchasers of
WorldCom securities.
Citigroup removed three senior executives in the wake of a banking
Scandal in
Japan . The scandal involved the
Private Bank , the division that deals with very wealthy customers. It was alleged that the Private Bank failed to follow certain anti-money laundering procedures, that it used deceptive sales tactics, and that it assisted a customer in doing transactions which disrupted the financial markets or were fraudulent. Some of the accusations included sales of complex securities to the unwary elderly that would likely not mature in their lifetime, violating the SEC regulations as well as business ethics. This caused the Japanese regulators to shut down the Private Bank.
Deryck Maughan , a Citigroup vice chairman and head of Citigroup International,
Thomas W. Jones , chairman and chief executive of the global investment management division, and
Peter K. Scaturro , head of Citi's private bank, left the company. Maughan had been with Citigroup and its predecessor Salomon Brothers since
1983 . Jones and Scaturro were both members of the Citigroup management committee. A memo from
CEO Charles Prince said that Citigroup
President Robert B. Willumstad would take charge of the businesses run by the three departing executives.
Citigroup was criticized for disrupting the European ,
2007 Relatedly, the U.S. Federal Reserve refused to rule on Citigroup's application to acquire First American Bank in Texas, from September 2004 through March 2005 (described in detail in
Inner City Press' Weekly Citigroup Watch Report ).
Citigroup is a major shareholder of
Brasil Telecom through an investment partnership in
Brazil , and was implicated in charges revolving around a highly controversial deal executed with pension funds of Brazilian state-owned companies, by which these funds would have a put option against them for a value deemed far above arm's-length market levels. After public outcry in Brazil, the deal was partly annulled by a federal court and the matter is being investigated by a panel of Brazilian congresspeople, with Citibank's president in Brazil Mr. Gustavo Marin having been heard in October 2005.
In 2001, Citibank settled a lawsuit for improperly assessing late fees. The class action lawsuit was for 45 million dollars. Following this Citibank lobbied in Congress, to pass legislation that would limit class action lawsuits to 5 million dollars unless they were initiated on a federal level (Class Action Fairness Act of 2005). Many consumer advocate websites report that Citibank is still improperly assessing late fees.
In March 2006, the Australian corporate regulator
ASIC filed penalty proceedings in the Federal Court against Citigroup's global markets subsidiary in Australia. ASIC has alleged that Citigroup, acting as an advisor to
Toll Holdings in its bid to takeover
Patrick Corporation , violated Australian law by engaging in conflicts with the interests of Toll and by engaging in insider trading. Citigroup had purchased a substantial shareholding in the shares of Patrick Corporation on the business day prior to Toll's takeover announcement for that company.
In June 2007, the Australian Federal Court rejected ASIC's case against Citi ruling that there was no clear case of insider trading in relation to Citi's trading of Patrick shares and that Citi did not owe a fudiciary duty to Toll. The court said that the mandate letter between Citi and Toll had excluded the existence of a fiduciary relationship between the parties that would otherwise have existed. ASIC has been forced to repay Citi court costs associated with the case.
Citigroup has been criticized by certain investors for poor stock performance over the past 5 years, returning a negative 1 percent while other large financial institutions have returned 55% and more, despite Citigroup's strong performance in its investment banking and retail banking sectors. The main weakness lies within corporate expenditures, and CEO Chuck Prince has pledged to devote his efforts to lowering expenditures in 2007 to mitigate this problem.
Some believe Citigroup should be broken up into various spin-offs to improve stockholder return. This is thought to improve return in two ways: one by making each spun off company easier to manage, and two increasing the stock price relative to the profits of each company, since investors may pay a higher price relative to profits of certain parts of the company.
There have been many proposals as to how to break up Citigroup. For example, Sam Advisors LLC has gone on CNBC and advocated Citigroup being broken up into an investment bank, an international bank, and a domestic bank. Others have advocated different solutions. The debate is intensified by the fact that Citigroup is the result of a great deal of mergers with components that are still run separately. For example, the subprime lending division, Citifinancial, has followed the business model of the company that Citigroup acquired, Associates First Capital. This model involves expanding into new countries and essentially inventing or reinventing the consumer finance business model in that country. This has often been very profitable for the company, although it has led to major problems as well (particularly in Japan and Argentina). The synergies between consumer finance and retail banking in any country remain to be seen however, causing some to advocate a spin off of the consumer finance franchise from the retail banking franchise. (The retail banking franchise itself is very different in each country it occupies. For example, Citibank in the United States has a relatively small branch network with midtier technological ability, and is distinguished by an aggressive effort to cross sell investment and insurance products to all customer segments. On the other hand, Citibank in Mexico (Banamex) is the largest bank in Mexico with a more mass market customer base and unique product set.)
- Citibank , providing Consumer Banking products.
- Banamex , largest Mexican bank
- Banco Cuscatlan , El Salvador biggest bank.
- Banco Uno , Central America largest credit card bank.
- Citimortgage , Mortgage Lender
- CitiInsurance , Insurance provider
- Citicapital , Institutional financial services
- Citifinancial , Consumer Finance aka Subprime Lending
- Citigroup Alternative Investments , Global Wealth Management
- Diners Club , Credit Card s.
- Primerica , engages in direct selling of financial services
- Smith Barney , Investment Services , both retail full service brokerage, Private Client Services , and formerly the brand name used for the Investment Bank
- CitiCards , Credit Cards
- Credicard / Credicard Citi , credit cards business in Brazil
Citigroup recently acquired the
Egg brand when it purchased
Egg Banking Plc , the worlds largest internet bank, from
Prudential .
