Citigroup Weighs Cutting 10% Of Wealth Employees In London

(Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc. is weighing a move to cut 51 roles across its wealth business in London as the division’s new chief looks for ways to boost the returns generated by the unit.

The cuts would affect about 10% of the unit’s 485 staffers in the UK and the bulk of the roles being eliminated would be from the assistant vice president to director level, according to a memo to staff seen by Bloomberg. They would include 21 roles in the firm’s private bank division, the memo shows.

“The wealth business is continuing to identify areas to improve efficiency through structural changes and cost base reductions,” Valentin Valderrabano, chief operating officer for the global wealth business, said in the memo, noting the company had begun a process with its London Consultation Forum. “The LCF representatives will engage with affected employees as soon as we are in a position to do so.” 

The latest consultation process is separate from one Citigroup started in 2022 with employees of its UK retail bank when it proposed winding down that division. At that time, the bank said it would focus its UK personal banking and wealth management business on select wealth clients. 

A Citigroup spokeswoman declined to comment. 

Reset on Expenses

Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser has said expanding the firm’s wealth management operations will be a key tenet of Citigroup’s strategy going forward and last year hired Bank of America Corp.’s Andy Sieg to reshape the division. In his prior role, Sieg was overseeing a team of more than 25,000 people providing investment and wealth services across the US.

With Citigroup, Sieg took the reins of a business with a broad international footprint that has seen returns slump even as client investment assets have climbed. The unit’s efficiency ratio - a measure of how much it costs to produce a dollar of revenue - inched up to 99% in the fourth quarter, seven percentage points higher than the same period a year earlier. 

“We fully recognize that this business isn’t where it needs to be,” Fraser told investors on a conference call last month. “Andy is off to a fast start. In addition to resetting the expense base and ensuring the right utilization of our balance sheet, he is tightening our focus to build fee-based revenue streams.”

Separately, Citigroup is in the middle of a vast restructuring that will see the Wall Street giant cut 5,000 jobs before the end of the first quarter as part of Fraser’s bid to slash expenses and boost firmwide profits. In the coming years, executives have said they expect those efforts to allow the firm to eliminate 20,000 roles in total and save as much as $2.5 billion in expenses.

--With assistance from Harry Wilson.

(Updates with earlier consultation process in fourth paragraph.)

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