Citigroup to Reinvest in U.S. Consumer Biz

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Citigroup (C) CEO Vikram Pandit acknowledged that opportunities exist within the big financial institution's floundering U.S. consumer franchise and said he's looking to reinvest the proceeds of toxic asset sales there.

Pandit was responding to a question posed by an analyst regarding last week's resignation of the head of Citigroup's North American consumer business, Terri Dial and the company's plans for the U.S. consumer business now that it falls under the leadership of Manuel Medina-Mora.

"We are reinvesting in the U.S. business and a lot of those reinvestments are in technologies, a lot of them are in systems," Pandit said on the call. "We also believe there is a larger clientele that we can serve versus the one we are serving in the cities we are in. And we haven't tapped as aggressively into our global reach as we wanted, as well, going forward.

"We do realize there are a lot more synergies to be gained by looking at the global expense structure, global technology, global databases linking clients and their families around the world," Pandit said. "That is something that is going to benefit all our businesses around the world, but is really going to benefit the U.S. consumer business as well because we happen to be in the larger cities ... with a lot more global population and there is a lot of linkage, particularly the emerging markets, in these cities."

• Add Comment