Citigroup To Focus On Wealth Management Services In Europe

Philip Morton, Investors Offshore.com

22 February 2001

Chairman and chief executive of Citigroup, Sandy Weill, spoke recently at the company's new European headquarters in Canary Wharf about expansion plans for its European operations.

At the two-day meeting of the company's management committee, Weill outlined objectives for the coming year, and assessed possibilities for growth, focussing on the areas of wealth management, credit card provision, and investment banking within a European context.

Weill observed that while he saw little scope for expansion in the pan-European retail banking sector at present, a move towards a more comprehensive provision of wealth management services could be an important one, with the growing emphasis on people making provision for their own future. He explained that the group's belief is that mass affluent investors not wealthy enough for private banking should be their principal target audience: 'It's where most of the money is. Conversations aren't finished as to what we should do,' he said.

Since adding the Scroders business to its Salomon Smith Barney arm last year, Citigroup believes that it has the scale it needs to become more deeply involved in the European investment banking industry, but Weill admitted that the practice of maintaining many different brands (which currently include Citibank, SSB, CitiFinancial, and SSB Citi Asset Management Group, to name but a few) was under review: 'We are thinking about how best to present ourselves to different client bases.'

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