EXCLUSIVE Citigroup to employ 3,000 in institutional banking in Asia for growth - Asia CEO

The Citi Bank logo is pictured in a showroom in Bangkok, Thailand, May 12, 2016. REUTERS / Athit Peravongmetha / File Photo

HONG KONG, June 7 (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc. (CN) plans to hire about 3,000 new workers for its institutional business in Asia over the next few years, sharpening its focus in a fast-growing region where it has left consumer banking. is its executive director for Asia and the Pacific.

Previously unannounced staff expansion plans underscore Citi’s ambition to establish institutional banking and wealth management for growth engines, seeking to boost revenues in a region that has become a battleground for global banks looking to take advantage of its vast economies and growing wealth.

Citi’s institutional business includes investment banking, as well as corporate and commercial banking units that provide, among other things, trade finance, cash management, payment and custody services.

“We are talking about real meat on the bone in the growth of our business across Asia,” Asia and Pacific CEO Peter Babay told Reuters. Babej took over that role in 2019, and previously worked as the global head of the group for financial institutions of the bank.

City has about $ 200 billion in wealth in Asia, and the bank was “on the right track” to increase clients’ assets by $ 150 billion by 2025, a spokesman said, despite global economic and market uncertainty.

The expansion of the bank’s institutional business in Asia is on top of plans announced last year to employ about 2,300 people by 2025 for its wealth management unit.

Citi said last year that $ 7 billion of capital released from the sale of consumer banking in 13 markets, 10 of which is in Asia, would be either returned to shareholders or invested in lucrative institutional banking and wealth management units.

The bank’s main regional institutional operations are in Hong Kong and Singapore, and Babei said the two hubs will be the key focus of an additional 3,000 employees per unit. It does not reveal the existing number of employees in the company.

“It gives you the feeling that the size of the expensive investments we are talking about, both from the perspective of people and from the perspective of capital, is very important,” Babej said.

Last year, Citi created a unique wealth management business to provide services to wealthy clients as well as individuals with extremely high net worth. The wealth business in Asia is also focused on hubs in Singapore and Hong Kong.

‘THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHINA’

Wealth managers at major global banks are easing expectations for Asia after China’s regulatory restructuring and slowdown caused by covid helped push customers to the margins, bankers and analysts told Reuters last month. More

“As global growth slows, so does Asia, but relative growth is still higher than most other places in the world,” Babej said.

“And that growth, which is turning into a wealth of portfolios, is what we are incredibly excited about, and the global solutions we can provide for that wealth are increasingly relevant to our Asian clients.

Babei believes that the wealth that has been accumulated and continues to grow in China is “very significant”, despite macroeconomic obstacles, uncertainties about Beijing’s so-called “common prosperity” and the challenges of COVID’s control measures.

“Even with a lower GDP growth rate (gross domestic product), it is something that is actually growing faster than the rest of the world,” Babej said, noting that the impact of the joint prosperity movement on clients’ international investment is difficult to predict.

Although it was expected that the Chinese economy would slow down sharply this year due to the challenges caused by the pandemic, among other things, the director of Citi Asia said that China’s economic and geopolitical challenges will be short-lived and will not change the bank’s strategy.

“We are in China for a long time,” he said. “There are questionnaires in light of the geopolitical situation and the macroeconomic situation, but in the long run, we deeply believe in the importance of China.

Babei, however, acknowledged that the inability to travel to China due to mandatory multi-week quarantine for incoming passengers, as part of the country’s COVID-free approach, was a challenge for both Citi’s clients and bankers.

“Our clients are much more willing to work through Zoom, but at the end of the day, especially from the point of view of a private bank, the impossibility of traveling is a challenge.

Reporting by Scott Murdoch and Selena Lee of Hong Kong; Edited by Sumeet Chatterjee and Kenneth McWell

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