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Tag: citi

  • Citi’s South Asia Head of Private Banking Departs

    Citi’s South Asia Head of Private Banking Departs

    Citigroup’s South Asia head of private banking is leaving the firm at the end of March.

    Jyrki Rauhio, Citigroup’s South Asia head of private banking, is leaving the bank at the end of March «to pursue other opportunities», according to an internal memo.

    Citigroup confirmed the memo’s content and said the bank won’t replace Rauhio. Jyrki Rauhio performed the role of South Asia Head for two years and did a great job putting in place a platform for growth and wants a new challenge, a Citi spokesperson said.

    Steven Lo, Asia-Pacific head of Citi Private Bank initially put in the North and South Asia structure when he took on the role of Asia Pacific CEO to help scale the business.

    However, Jyrki’s role will not be replaced and all the South Asia Global Market Managers will now report to Steven. «As a result, this gives us the opportunity to relook the structure of the business and Steven Lo has decided to streamline it,» the bank spokesperson said.

    Rauhio, based in Singapore, has been with the bank for 25 years in locations including Helsinki, Warsaw, New York, and Hong
    Kong.

  • Citi Appoints Asia Chief Operating Officer

    Citi Appoints Asia Chief Operating Officer

    The senior executive takes on a new role, according to an internal memo shared after two decades with Citi’s equities and markets unit.

    Citi has appointed Andrea Fletcher as its chief operating officer for Asia.

    In the newly created role based in Hong Kong, Fletcher will help drive Citi’s efforts to grow the regional franchise. She will also join the Asia Operating Committee, the announcement said.

    The COO appointment follows the confirmation of Citi’s new chief for the region, Peter Babej, after the regional helm was held for six months by interim head Tim Monger, who will resume his sole chief financial officer role.

    According to her LinkedIn profile, Fletcher joined Citi in 1999 as director of equity and research sales, based in Sydney. Her 20-year career at the bank is split almost equally between Australia and Hong Kong, with her most recent role being managing director and global head of client strategy, equities and prime finance.

    She helped establish the Citi Women’s Network in Hong Kong and Australia, while also playing an active role in Citi’s diversity, recruiting, mentoring and leadership development efforts both internally and externally with the bank’s clients.

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  • Citi Targets Doubling of Singapore WM Market Share

    Citi Targets Doubling of Singapore WM Market Share

    From its current 5 percent, Citibank Singapore plans to double its wealth management market share alongside the number of clients by 2025.

    The bank’s Singapore chief executive Brendan Carney believed that the retail and wealth management business could further accelerate growth after assets grew 11 percent in 2019, including 19 percent client asset growth from its wealth management segment.

    We think there’s another gear that we can shift into and go from double-digit growth to really strong double-digit growth, Carney said.

    As part of the growth plans, the bank made investments in the tens of millions in a new flagship wealth management center based in one of Singapore’s major shopping and luxury areas, Orchard Road. The 30,000 square foot wealth management center will occupy four storeys including two floors for 400 relationship managers and specialists as well as two floors for client meetings and events.

    Though the bank hopes to add at least one more flagship center, its broader plan in the city-state is to reduce its branch presence. By the end of 2020, it targets three from 14 branches to 11 – one wealth management center, seven branches and three instant banking centers for basic transactional services.

    Still, Carney noted that Citi is not a digital-only bank and has not aspirations to become one. In fact, Citi will look to grow its client-facing staff by 20-25 percent over the next three to five years and also boost training for its existing relationship managers.

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  • Citi Singapore Doubles Paternity Leave

    Citi Singapore Doubles Paternity Leave

    The move is part of the bank’s initiatives to create an inclusive workplace and follows moves to increase female representation in senior roles and narrow the wage gap between male and female staff.

    Citi Singapore is extending its paid paternity leave from the government-mandated two weeks, to four weeks, under enhanced parental leave policies that are being rolled out globally in 74 markets this year.

    This move is in line with Citi’s new global paid parental leave policy to recognize the role that both parents play in raising a child, as well as to build an inclusive workplace, a statement on Wednesday said.

    The policy was launched on January 21, but will be backdated to January 1 for the first 18 markets, which includes Singapore. The leave, which applies to staff of all nationalities, must be used within the year of the child’s birth. New mothers will continue to receive 16 weeks of paid leave, the bank said.

    The move helps to drive greater gender equality, transform the perception that caregiving is only a female responsibility and create a more level playing field at home and at work, Jorge Osorio, head of human resources, Citi Singapore, said.

    In January, the bank said it would work towards increasing global representation of women in Assistant Vice President to Managing Director level roles to a minimum of 40 percent by 2021 to address its unadjusted pay gap. The share of females in such roles in Singapore grew from 32 percent in December 2017, to 36 percent in December 2019.

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  • Former Citi Banker Returns to Head FIG in Hong Kong

    Former Citi Banker Returns to Head FIG in Hong Kong

    A former investment banker with Citi will be returning to the American lender to lead its financial institution’s group for Hong Kong.

    Loretta Ko joins as the head of the FIG unit for Hong Kong from Banco Santander, where she held the same position. In addition to Citi, where she spent 15 years between 1989 and 2004, she had previously also worked for the likes of ANZ and Standard Chartered.

    Hong Kong financial institutions (group) is a significant and growing part of corporate banking in the country as well as a critical contributor to the broader Asia Pacific financial institutions franchise, said a report citing the bank’s statement.

    Not unlike many major competitors, Citi has placed a focus on creating a quantitive gender balance in its workforce which includes a target of having women make up at least 40 percent of assistance vice president to managing director-leveled jobs by 2021-end.

    According to the bank, Asia is rapidly making progress towards that goal with the current figure at 39 percent. In 2019, 14 of the total 45 newly named managing directors (31 percent) in Asia were female, up from eight in the previous year.

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  • Ex-Citi Singapore Banker To Join Grab-Singtel

    Ex-Citi Singapore Banker To Join Grab-Singtel

    Citibank Singapore’s head of retail banking Charles Wong is set to join the Grab-Singtel entity that is bidding for a digital full bank in Singapore.

    With strong credentials for bringing about a strong turnaround of Citi Singapore’s business, Charles Wong is likely to play a key role in the digital full bank if the Grab-Singtel consortium secures the license, according to a report.

    Wong had resigned from the U.S. bank in February after more than 20 years at Citibank, where he spent nearly five years in his last role as head of retail banking at Citibank Singapore. Under his leadership, the unit delivered consistent double-digit growth.

    Grab Holdings and Singtel have jointly applied for a digital full bank license, with Grab holding a 60 percent stake in the proposed consortium, and Singtel holding the rest.

    Both partners see financial services as a natural extension of their core businesses.

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  • Citi Private Bank Names Global Market Manager

    Citi Private Bank Names Global Market Manager

    Citi Private Bank internally promotes a heavyweight banker to become a global market manager based in Hong Kong.

    Kevin King has been named as the global market manager for southern mainland China. He was most recently a team head covering the offshore Chinese market.

    A spokesperson for the bank declined to comment on the appointment.

    King is a seasoned private banking veteran renowned for his deep network and relatively fast rise in an industry with a notoriously thin pool of senior talent. In addition to 11 years with Citi Private Bank, King had also previously worked with the likes of J. Safra Sarasin, UBS and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council where he focused on developing relations with the Greater China business community.

    The most notable tailwind for the southern mainland region is the ambitious Greater Bay Area plans which envision closer integration between Hong Kong, Macau and several cities in the Guangdong province.

    In addition to creating an integrated economic and business hub, the plan if successful is expected to provide a boost to the tech sector most notably by filling the talent gap between fast-growing demand from mainland China and the relatively small pool in Hong Kong. According to a Colliers estimate, the Greater Bay Area could generate gargantuan economic output totaling $3.6 trillion annually by 2030.

  • Moody’s Economist Joins Citi Australia

    Moody’s Economist Joins Citi Australia

    The bank is expanding its local research team as it hopes to strengthen its research insights and provide tailored insights on the implications for Australia.

    Citi Australia is bolstering its research capabilities with the addition of Faraz Syed, the bank announced in a statement on Wednesday.

    Syed joins from Moody’s Analytics, where he was an economist responsible for producing thematic analysis on domestic macroeconomic issues, and country forecasts for Australia, Japan and India, and led research on the Australian housing market. He was previously a research economist at the Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resources, Economics and Sciences.

    In his new role, Syed will report to Citi Australia chief economist Josh Williamson. In the announcement, Citi noted growing demand among clients for deeper insights into key macro-economic influences, as well as its Equity Research function, which has more than 160 ASX-listed stocks under coverage.

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  • Citi Singapore to Shut Iconic Branch

    Citi Singapore to Shut Iconic Branch

    As part of its network reconfiguration, Citi is shuttering its iconic branch at McDonald House on 28 February.

    For its replacement, the U.S. bank said it will soon launch a whole new and exciting retail banking branch experience after its MacDonald House lease expires at the end of this month. Details on the new branch were not revealed.

    Citi consistently reviews its branch network strategy. Clients today increasingly bank on mobile, with almost 100 percent of financial transactions being able to be served through digital platforms. Our retail footprint and the way we serve customers will continue to evolve,» said a Citibank Singapore spokesperson.

    MacDonald House, situated across the road from Dhoby Ghaut MRT station, was initially built for a bank. It became gazetted as a national monument in 2003 and has a place in Singapore’s history as the site of a bombing attack in 1965 during the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation, or the Konfrontasi.

    Citi commenced business at the MacDonald House in 2005, taking up 37,000 sq ft of space over four floors. The 14 staff currently at the MacDonald House branch will be redeployed to the bank’s remaining 13 branches in Singapore, the Citi spokesperson added.

    The bank’s latest branch network rejig comes as part of the review led by Citibank Singapore’s new chief executive Brendan Carney, who moved to Singapore from South Korea in May last year.

    The lender’s move also comes amidst a change in the banking landscape, as 21 consortiums vie for the five digital bank licenses offered by the city-state.

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  • Citibank’s Singapore Head of Retail Exits

    Citibank’s Singapore Head of Retail Exits

    Citi’s head of retail banking in the city-state leaves after more than two decades with the American lender.

    Charles Wong exits the bank after nearly five years in his last role as Singapore head of retail banking. A spokesperson for the bank confirmed his exit.

    In 2015, Wong was appointed to his current role to oversee the retail banking business alongside wealth management, bancassurance, sales and network distribution.

    With over 20 years of experience at Citi, Wong has held a range of roles in retail banking, bancassurance, credit payment products and marketing across Asia Pacific. He was seconded to Citibank’s China business from 2006 to 2008 where he was the head of branch expansion and ATM distribution as well as director for CitiBusiness and customer experience. He was also previously involved in the launch of the Citi Priority segment across APAC which targets emerging affluent customers.

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  • Citi Private Bank Nets Ex-Managing Director from UBS

    Citi Private Bank Nets Ex-Managing Director from UBS

    Citi Private Bank hires a former managing director from UBS to lead its South Asia FX advisory team based in Singapore.

    Christian Schuwey joins the bank, effective immediately, with responsibilities to drive «significant growth» in Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, according to a statement, naming the South Asia region as the main driver of Citi Private Bank’s APAC FX business. Schuwey reports to Adam Cowperthwaite, managing director and head of capital markets, Asia Pacific at the private bank.

    Schuwey was most recently a managing director with UBS where he led a team of FX advisors based in Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Taipei covering ultra-high net worth clients across the flow and structured products. Schuwey has over 30 years of experience and spent over a decade as an FX trader at UBS’s investment bank before shifting to its wealth arm where he developed direct, longstanding relationships with some of Asia Pacific’s largest UHNW FX trading clients.

    He will be working in partnership with the bank’s front office and Cora Chiu, North Asia head of FX advisory, to increase understanding and usage of FX-linked products, hedging tools, and funding solutions.

  • Citi Singapore Adjusts Gender Wage Gap

    Citi Singapore Adjusts Gender Wage Gap

    In a move to narrow wage gaps between male and female staff, Citi Singapore has adjusted the pay of women at its bank. Its female staff did not receive equal compensation when compared with their male peers of equal work performance.

    In Singapore, the bank’s female representation at the assistant vice president to managing director level roles has increased from 32 percent in December 2017 to 36 percent in December 2019, but their remuneration has not necessarily kept up, according to figures released by the bank.

    While we have moved forward in our goals, more needs to be done. We are committed to meet our global goal of having at least 40 percent of women in these roles by 2021 and to provide a level playing field to all our employees to enable them to succeed, said Jorge Osorio, head of human resources, Citi Singapore.

    The pay adjustment in Singapore for women is in line with the global tweaks made in 2019, where the bank found that women, despite delivering equal work performance against their male peers, did not get the same remuneration.

    This follows a global pay equity review conducted by Citi that was released in January 2019, which showed that women were paid on average 99 percent of what men were paid on an adjusted basis. The adjusted pay gap refers to when pay – including base salary and bonuses – for equal work, has been adjusted for appropriate factors such as job function, level, and geography.

    However, the unadjusted total compensation review showed that the median pay for women globally is 71 percent of the median for men. This means the compensation is not adjusted for factors such as job function, level, and geography.

    The figures suggest that the gap – on an unadjusted basis – is mainly due to differences in gender representation at senior levels of the bank. In turn, this reinforces the importance of increasing the representation of women and U.S. minorities in senior and higher-paying roles at Citi, the bank said.

    The fresh data also come as Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower released a report this month showing that in Singapore, among full-time workers aged between 25 and 54, the unadjusted gender wage gap inched up from 16 percent in 2002 to 16.3 percent in 2018.

    When differences in age, education, occupation, industry and the number of hours worked were accounted for, the adjusted gender wage gap fell from 8.8 percent in 2002 to 6 percent in 2018. It also showed that there is more occupational segregation in 2018 than in 2002.

    Not only do women tend to be in lower-paying jobs compared to men, but men also continue to be over-represented in higher-paying occupations. Across the Asia-Pacific, Citi promoted 14 women or 31 percent out of the total 45 managing directors named in the region in December 2019. That’s up from only eight in 2018, or 21 percent.

    In March 2018, the bank rolled out a «Maternity Matters» program in Singapore to boost the support provided to female colleagues during their pregnancy, while they are on maternity leave and upon return to work. Statistics suggest that childbirth is related to the high female attrition in the workforce.

    The bank also launched a #backtowork initiative in November 2019 in partnership with Mums@Work Singapore to encourage talented individuals who have taken time away from their careers and are interested in returning back to the workforce to join Citi.

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  • Citi Singapore Adjusts Gender Wage Gap

    Citi Singapore Adjusts Gender Wage Gap

    In a move to narrow wage gaps between male and female staff, Citi Singapore has adjusted the pay of women at its bank. Its female staff did not receive equal compensation when compared with their male peers of equal work performance.

    In Singapore, the bank’s female representation at the assistant vice president to managing director level roles has increased from 32 percent in December 2017 to 36 percent in December 2019, but their remuneration has not necessarily kept up, according to figures released by the bank.

    «While we have moved forward in our goals, more needs to be done. We are committed to meet our global goal of having at least 40 percent of women in these roles by 2021 and to provide a level playing field to all our employees to enable them to succeed,» said Jorge Osorio, head of human resources, Citi Singapore.

    The pay adjustment in Singapore for women is in line with the global tweaks made in 2019, where the bank found that women, despite delivering equal work performance against their male peers, did not get the same remuneration.

    This follows a global pay equity review conducted by Citi that was released in January 2019, which showed that women were paid on average 99 percent of what men were paid on an adjusted basis. The adjusted pay gap refers to when pay – including base salary and bonuses – for equal work, has been adjusted for appropriate factors such as job function, level, and geography.

    However, the unadjusted total compensation review showed that the median pay for women globally is 71 percent of the median for men. This means the compensation is not adjusted for factors such as job function, level, and geography.

    The figures suggest that the gap – on an unadjusted basis – is mainly due to differences in gender representation at senior levels of the bank. In turn, this reinforces the importance of increasing the representation of women and U.S. minorities in senior and higher-paying roles at Citi, the bank said.

    The fresh data also come as Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower released a report this month showing that in Singapore, among full-time workers aged between 25 and 54, the unadjusted gender wage gap inched up from 16 percent in 2002 to 16.3 percent in 2018.

    When differences in age, education, occupation, industry and the number of hours worked were accounted for, the adjusted gender wage gap fell from 8.8 percent in 2002 to 6 percent in 2018. It also showed that there is more occupational segregation in 2018 than in 2002.

    Not only do women tend to be in lower-paying jobs compared to men, but men also continue to be over-represented in higher-paying occupations. Across the Asia-Pacific, Citi promoted 14 women or 31 percent out of the total 45 managing directors named in the region in December 2019. That’s up from only eight in 2018, or 21 percent.

    In March 2018, the bank rolled out a «Maternity Matters» program in Singapore to boost the support provided to female colleagues during their pregnancy, while they are on maternity leave and upon return to work. Statistics suggest that childbirth is related to the high female attrition in the workforce.

    The bank also launched a #backtowork initiative in November 2019 in partnership with Mums@Work Singapore to encourage talented individuals who have taken time away from their careers and are interested in returning back to the workforce to join Citi.

  • Citi To Hire 2,500 Coders This Year

    Citi To Hire 2,500 Coders This Year

    Citigroup’s investment bank plans to recruit 2,500 programmers this year as technology reshapes the business. The move should save as much as $600 million in 2020.

    Citi intends to beef up the unit that houses its traders and investment bankers with coders and data scientists.  The Institutional Clients Group (ICG) arm, which already has 23,000 technology specialists in its ICG business globally, said the new roles will be in London, New York, Shanghai, Toronto, Dublin, Tel Aviv, Pune and Chennai in India, and Tampa, Florida.

    The hires reflect what we are building in technology and why we are focused on making salespeople and traders more effective at servicing our clients, said Stuart Riley, Citi’s global head of operations and technology.

    About three-quarters of the company’s trade orders last year were electronic, according to Riley. Technology is augmenting what humans do by making better use of data.

    Citigroup budgets roughly $8.5 billion, or about 20 percent of total expenses for technology every year. Bank of America Corp has said it spends approximately $10 billion on technology, with about US$3 billion allocated to new projects.

    Global banks are investing billions in a race to apply technologies that make front-office staff more efficient and keep clients trading.  Other firms that are hiring as computer specialists include Goldman Sachs Group Inc and J.P. Morgan.

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  • Fraser Could Be Citi’s First Female Boss

    Fraser Could Be Citi’s First Female Boss

    Citigroup president Jane Fraser looks poised to become a Wall Street bank’s first female chief. 52-year-old Jane Fraser could become the first female boss of a major Wall Street bank. Her promotion to the number-two job at Citi comes at a crucial juncture for the U.S. lender, whose performance has fallen behind those of rivals J.P. Morgan and Bank of America over the past few years.

    The board faces increasing investor pressure for bolder strategic decisions at the group level and better performance at its consumer banking division, which Fraser now helms.

    When Fraser started her career at McKinsey, she said she would only take the job if she could work directly for the consulting giant’s head of banking, recalled Lowell Bryan, the McKinsey banking boss. He was so impressed by the bold 26-year-old that he hired her.

    Twenty-five years later, Fraser is being tipped for a far more significant first, after she was named President of Citigroup in October.

    The gutsy streak Bryan recognized in Fraser stuck with her over the course of her career, according to colleagues. In the past 15 years at Citi, Fraser helped navigate the bank out of the financial crisis, reshaped its private bank after the 2012 sale of U.S. brokerage Smith Barney, and led its mortgage business through the gloomy days between 2013 and 2015.

    In an era where banks have begun to focus more on its wealth management businesses, Fraser was ahead of the pack in making a mark.  She increased revenue by more than a fifth from the first half of 2010 to the first half of 2013, plus overhauled the division’s leadership. Bold decisions included initiating a fee schedule that does not differentiate whether clients used Citi’s internal fund managers or outside firms, a move that steered the bank away from conflicts of interest that plagued rivals.

    Fraser’s path to the top job is not without competition though. Potential contenders to succeed Mike Corbat include Citi’s longstanding investment bank boss Paco Ybarra, and chief financial officer Mark Mason, who has held operational and strategic roles.

    Fraser’s operational experience will surely be put to question. «She lacks the volume of experience or running meaningful things at the bank,» said one contemporary.

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