Citigroup Inc. is a global diversified financial services holding company based in New York. The U.S. government owns 27% of the banking giant following bailout measures taken to rescue it from collapse amid the global financial crisis.
Citi recently repaid the $20 billion balance owed the government, although the Treasury Department still owns more than one-fourth of Citi's common stock. Now the bank is working to reduce the government shadow and sell off its peripheral businesses, focusing on its core of investment banking and global consumer and business banking. The company is evolving from a financial supermarket into a leaner company that caters to big institutions and affluent individuals, particularly in fast-growing emerging markets.
Citi has been viewed as the riskiest member of the Big Four money-center banks, according to Barron's magazine. It is splitting itself into two businesses, shedding several businesses and shrinking itself by a third. The company recently spun off its Smith Barney brokerage unit into a joint venture with Morgan Stanley, called Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, which will come under CitiHoldings. It is also shed Primerica, its life-insurance and mutual-fund sales unit, which recently went public. The bank is also streamlining its investment-banking operation -- one of the world's largest. It is scaling back its proprietary trading and selling off two consumer-finance units and its private-label credit-card business. Its U.S. consumer strategy remains a work in progress. The overhaul marks the end of Citigroup's one-stop-shop financial supermarket model, which had been pieced together over the years by legendary dealmaker, Citi's ex-CEO Sandy Weill.
Citi's turnaround strategy appears to be starting to work, but it's still expected to be a long slog to recovery. Morale is low after the company cut 110,000 jobs and sold off assets. The bank's North American mortgage and credit card businesses are still ailing due to the troubles in those markets. Among Citi's positives are its strong capital position, high loan-loss reserves, appealing global-consumer and corporate-banking franchise and relatively small exposure to commercial real estate, Barron's reports. Transaction-services business, which moves money around the world for governments, giant corporations and other organizations, remained lucrative. Retail-banking businesses outside the U.S. appear to be rebounding. The bank is expected to invest heavily in these efforts in Asia and Latin America. Its management challenges include working with its new government partners while also recovering from heavy losses. According to The Wall Street Journal, some Citi employees have said that working for the financial colossus with its huge bureaucracy was already like working for the government. Despite criticism from government officials of a variety of corporate expenditures, the bank saw through its $400 million naming deal for Citi Field, the New York Mets new ballpark.
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