Citigroup to hire 3,000 in Asia institutional banking business

HONG KONG: Citigroup Inc plans to hire around 3,000 new staff for its Asia institutional business in the next few years, sharpening its focus in a fast-growing region where it has exited consumer banking in most markets, its Asia Pacific chief executive said.

The previously unreported staff expansion plans underline Citi’s ambition to make institutional banking and wealth management engines of growth, seeking to bolster revenue in a region that has become a battleground for global banks looking to tap its vast economies and growing wealth.

Citi’s institutional business includes investment banking, and corporate and commercial banking units that provide trade finance, cash management, payments, and custody services, among others.

“We’re talking about real meat on the bones on growing our business across Asia,” Asia-Pacific CEO Peter Babej told Reuters in an interview. Babej took on the role in 2019 and previously worked as global head of the bank’s financial institutions group.

Citi has around $200 billion in wealth assets in Asia, and the bank was “on track” to grow client assets by $150 billion by 2025, a spokesman said, despite global economic and markets uncertainties.

The bank’s expansion of Asian institutional business comes on top of plans announced last year to hire about 2,300 people by 2025 for its wealth management unit.

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

The bank’s main regional institutional business are in Hong Kong and Singapore, and Babej said that these two hubs would be a key focus of the 3,000 additional headcount for the unit. It does not disclose the existing headcount for the business.

“That gives you a sense that the magnitude of the set of investment we’re talking about both from a people perspective, and from a capital perspective, it is very significant,” Babej said.

Last year, Citi created a single wealth management business, to deliver services to clients from the affluent segment as well as ultra-high net worth individuals. The Asia wealth business is also centered in Singapore and Hong Kong, hubs where the bank still retains its consumer banking units.

‘IMPORTANCE OF CHINA’

Wealth managers at the big global banks are tempering their expectations for Asia, after China’s regulatory crackdown and COVID-driven slowdown helped to push clients to the sidelines, bankers and analysts told Reuters last month.

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

“And that growth, which translates into portfolio wealth, is one that we’re incredibly excited about, and the global solutions that we can provide for that wealth are increasingly relevant for our Asian clients.”