Citibank Profile

Citibank is a major international bank, founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, later First National City Bank of New York. Citibank is now the consumer banking arm of financial services giant Citigroup, one of the largest companies in the world. As of June 2009, Citigroup is the third largest bank holding company in the United States by total assets.

Citibank has retail banking operations in more than 100 countries and territories around the world. More than half of its 1,400 offices are in the United States, mostly in the New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco/Silicon Valley, and Miami. More recently, Citi has expanded to include the Boston, Philadelphia, Houston, Dallas, and Washington D.C. metropolitan areas, albiet with a mixed record of success^[2]. It was reported that Citigroup executives were pleased with the performance of the Boston branches, but were less impressed with the Philadelphia experiment, according to a person familiar with the situation.

On September 24, 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported that Citi planned to narrow the focus of Citigroup's U.S. branch network to just six major metropolitan areas, including New York, Washington, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, where Citi has a substantial presence but ranks no higher than No. 3 in deposits. The article also noted that Citi could abandon or scale back where it is an also-ran, including Boston, Philadelphia and parts of Texas, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

In addition to the standard banking transactions, Citibank offers insurance, credit card and investment products. Their online services division is among the most successful in the field, claiming about 15 million users.

As a result of the Global financial crisis of 2008–2009 and huge losses in the value of its subprime mortgage assets, Citibank was rescued by the U.S. government under plans agreed for Citigroup. On November 23, 2008, in addition to initial aid of $25 billion, a further $25 billion was invested in the corporation together with guarantees for risky assets amounting to $306 billion.