Citigroup is mulling to part with as many as 20 of its consumer finance businesses that are located in Europe – reported Singapore’s Business Times. The new, reorganised group is expected to have a consumer division, a securities devision with investment banking operation, and a financial service business of approximately equal size.
In an interview given to the newspaper, Vikram Pandit, CEO of the troubled bank, has cited scarcity of funds and less robustess of consumer finance market as the primary reasons behind the move. We’ve done a pretty good job in the first two quarters of this year. But we got there after a lot of hard work last year. We reduced our assets by almost 25%. We reduced our risk by a lot more than that number. And we cut about $16 billion a year in expenses, Mr. Pandit added.
However, Mr. Pandit has said that subsequent to the completion of the exchange of preferred shares for common equity in last month, following a series of huge credit losses and write downs, the bank’s capital position has improved. On the completion of our exchange offer, we had 12.7% tier 1 capital and more than 9% tier 1 common capital, he said – reported in Reuters.
