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Business Recorder
5 days ago
- Business
- Business Recorder
Pakistan to slow dollar buying, reduce rupee pressure: report
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) will continue to build its dollar stockpile but at a slower pace without putting undue pressure on the rupee, according to Citigroup Inc., Bloomberg reported. 'Although reserves have improved from the lows of early 2023, we still continue to welcome the central bank's reserve building as external buffers remain low,' Katie Kironde, emerging markets economist and macro strategist at Citi, wrote in a note. The central bank eased its reserve building strategy this week, and this helped liquidity improve in the interbank market, she added. The pressure on the Pakistani rupee has eased in the past three trading sessions, data from the central bank shows. The currency, however, is still lagging most peers in Asia year-to-date, having fallen over 2% against the dollar. The country's forex reserves, meanwhile, rose $23 million to $14.53 billion as of July 11. In the interbank market on Friday, the rupee appreciated 0.27% against the US dollar, settling at 283.45, a gain of Re0.77 compared to the previous close of 284.22. This marks a continuation of the currency's strengthening trend observed earlier in the week. Currency dealers attribute the improvement in the rupee's performance partly to a reported crackdown on foreign currency smuggling by law enforcement agencies. According to Malik Bostan, Chairman of the Exchange Companies Association of Pakistan (ECAP), raids conducted by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) against smugglers led to a drop in the dollar rate both in open and interbank markets. On Wednesday, the rupee had recovered by Re0.21 in the interbank, closing at Rs284.76 compared to Tuesday's Rs284.97. Bostan revealed that he had led a delegation to meet Director General Counter-Intelligence General Faisal Naseer at the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) headquarters. Following the meeting, orders were reportedly issued for a targeted crackdown against currency smugglers, particularly those operating routes to Afghanistan and Iran. 'The dollar supply to legal channels had been shrinking due to better rates in the black market. With this crackdown, the smuggler mafia has gone underground,' Bostan said, expressing optimism that the exchange rate could fall further to Rs270 or even Rs250 if enforcement continues. Meanwhile, global currency markets also lent support to the rupee's recent performance. The US dollar steadied near two-week lows on Friday, with the dollar index set for its weakest weekly performance in a month. Oil prices also rose on optimism around trade developments and potential Russian gasoline export restrictions, further supporting sentiment. Financial conditions in Pakistan have improved, with the central bank cutting the key policy rate by half to 11% since last year to bolster growth. The South Asian nation has steered itself out of near-default conditions in 2023, with the Shehbaz Sharif-led government unlocking funds under International Monetary Fund programs and unveiling a budget that pledged to stay the course on fiscal consolidation.
Bloomberg
15-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Citi Plans ‘Strata Elite' Credit Card to Rival Amex Platinum
Citigroup Inc. is preparing to launch a premium credit card, returning to a competitive field as more banks target high-end customers with elaborate rewards offerings. The bank is planning to launch a card named 'Strata Elite' in the third quarter of the year that 'rounds out our family of proprietary rewards cards,' it said in an earnings presentation Tuesday. The presentation did not include details on whether Citigroup will charge an annual fee for the card or what its specific rewards will be.
Yahoo
03-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Man Tasked With Ending Citigroup's Fat-Finger Blunders
(Bloomberg) -- Just before Citigroup Inc.'s tech chief faced his first global town hall meeting, he got some pointed advice from his teenager: Make sure the technology works. NYC Commutes Resume After Midtown Bus Terminal Crash Chaos Struggling Downtowns Are Looking to Lure New Crowds Massachusetts to Follow NYC in Making Landlords Pay Broker Fees What Gothenburg Got Out of Congestion Pricing Foreign Buyers Swoop on Cape Town Homes, Pricing Out Locals That hasn't always been a given at Citigroup. For the past year, Tim Ryan — an earnest, soft-spoken Bostonian who was once told in high school he'd never amount to much — has been untangling legacy software and data systems that have irked the bank's moneymakers and regulators, and have at times made it an industry punchline. The most notorious moments: 'fat-finger' errors that accidentally credited fortunes to recipients. Now, his division has made enough progress that it recently invited the bank's global workforce to a first-of-its-kind update on what's done and what's to come. The town hall – with the energy of a Silicon Valley product launch – opened to thumping music and a montage video with a cybernetic take on Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, before Ryan walked on stage in jeans and white sneakers. Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser soon followed, urging tech staffers to keep going — 'crushing the competition.' It was a striking performance for a company once known for underinvesting in software and data management, resulting in a patchwork of legacy systems that prompted bank examiners to demand an overhaul and impose penalties. 'I came in with my eyes wide open, in terms of where we were and what needed to be done,' Ryan later said in an interview. He commands one of Citigroup's biggest armies of staff and oversees a budget that reflects the bank's more urgent focus on tech. It spent just over $9 billion, or almost a fifth of total operating expenses last year, on technology and communications – a larger proportion than its main competitors – according to regulatory filings. The alternative, putting off upgrades, has proved costly in other ways. Five years ago, the bank accidentally wired more than $900 million to creditors of cosmetics company Revlon Inc., setting off a two-year legal fight to recoup the money. This year, other errors emerged in the media. Citigroup credited one account with $81 trillion after an employee failed to remove the line of zeros that automatically filled an electronic form. A separate copy-paste error almost missent $6 billion. Both mistakes were undone, and no money left the bank. In another incident that hasn't previously been reported, an error let a pair of people on the same account withdraw a roughly $100,000 certificate of deposit twice, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified describing the behind-the-scenes problem. Some of the processes at issue in those cases now barely need humans. 'Where the risk is high, we've taken the right steps to automate both detective and preventative controls,' Ryan said. Not a Consultant Before Ryan arrived, Citigroup insiders jokingly dubbed the team overseeing its technology the 'Verizon Mafia' because it has long included a group of managers who had jumped from Verizon Communications Inc. to Barclays Plc to JPMorgan Chase & Co. before landing at the firm. When his appointment was announced, some employees rolled their eyes again. Under Fraser, a former McKinsey & Co. partner, the bank has faced criticism for running up consulting bills — once spending more on advisers than tech as part of the company's so-called transformation plan in 2021. Then with Ryan's hiring, it seemed the bank had put another consultant in charge: His last job before joining Citigroup was running PwC's US workforce of 75,000 people. He said that's the wrong way to see him. 'The reality is I was a CEO for eight years,' he said. 'I've sweat over the balance sheet, delivered sustainable earnings, driven growth, dealt with our own regulatory challenges, had a board. People perceive me as a consultant. But it is what it is.' Even more, he aims to reduce the bank's reliance on third parties. 'I want us to own more,' Ryan said. 'It's not an expense thing – it's a confidence thing. I need our people to know that I trust them.' The bank's back-office technology empire includes 50,000 full-time staff, comprising more than a fifth of the firm's 229,000 employees. Adding to that are 45,000 contractors. Together, they span outposts in India, China, the UK and Canada, though much of the senior power is in Irving, Texas. Since arriving, Ryan has reshaped that workforce, cutting 3,500 positions at certain locations in China as he consolidates staff into key hubs. He also has shifted managers, with some departing. 'Accountability doesn't have to be a public hanging,' he said. 'You mentor people, and if it doesn't work, you work them out of the system.' Teacher's Warning One Citigroup habit Ryan is trying to break is the impulse to keep modifying old technology. The bank customized a key enterprise software platform, ServiceNow, so much that it struggled to receive updates from the software's maker. Simpler is better, he said. So is moving quickly. The mission is well-suited to the executive, who grew up with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. 'My high school biology teacher told me I'd never amount to anything in life. My second grade teacher tied me to the chair and taped my mouth on the first day,' he said. But he found strategies for dealing with his challenges and later peace in a demanding industry. 'When everything's moving so fast, that actually is conducive to someone like me.' In the past year, the bank has distilled 12 screening systems for international sanctions into one, retired 20 cash equities platforms and launched a new one, and consolidated software for banking teams so they can manage deals in one place. It also developed a relationship with Google Cloud's Vertex AI platform and rolled out a generative AI tool to 150,000 employees. And the technology team helped the rest of the bank complete the separation of Banamex, Citigroup's retail unit in Mexico, ahead of a planned public listing. Personal Memos In an unusual move for a Wall Street executive, Ryan sends near-weekly emails to his global staff, detailing intimate moments in his personal and professional life. Last month, he sent them an email titled 'Lifelong principles rediscovered,' in which he described his three-day vacation to Rome with his wife, including reflections on a tiff with her and their sighting of the new pope. He signed off: 'Mondays will be okay — they always are!' --With assistance from Matthew Boyle. SNAP Cuts in Big Tax Bill Will Hit a Lot of Trump Voters Too How to Steal a House America's Top Consumer-Sentiment Economist Is Worried China's Homegrown Jewelry Superstar Pistachios Are Everywhere Right Now, Not Just in Dubai Chocolate ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Mint
01-07-2025
- Business
- Mint
Citi Plans Ukraine Deals as Top Government Banker Retires
Citigroup Inc.'s top banker to governments is retiring, but has at least one more appointment to keep. In September, Julie Monaco will travel to Europe for her bank's Ukraine unit's board meeting. It's one sign of Ukraine's importance to Citigroup, which is the only US bank still operating in the country and counts the government among its roughly 500 clients there. Now, it's readying for the nation's reconstruction once Russia's war on Ukraine is ultimately over. 'There is business there that has continued to grow,' Monaco, Citigroup's global head of public-sector banking, said in an interview. 'There's going to be a lot of opportunity and it will require a lot of capital.' In her four-decade career, which started in trade finance, Monaco, 61, helped post-Soviet Russia connect to the Swift international payment system, helped build Citigroup's close ties to New Zealand's government and advised vaccine initiative Covax and its co-leader Gavi during the Covid-19 pandemic. She's also worked on major debt deals, including helping Indonesia become the first country to issue bonds after the pandemic started. Monaco is leaving Citigroup at a time when uncertainty about government policy making is at an all-time high and many of her clients are facing geopolitical instability and mounting debt levels. Those will be top challenges for her successor, Stephanie von Friedeburg, a managing director who previously served as chief operating officer of International Finance Corp. Citigroup, which converted a Kyiv bank vault into a bomb shelter for its staff, is already playing a significant role ushering capital into Ukraine, through funding by multilateral development banks, blended finance and private investors betting on the upside of reconstruction after years of war. The bank is working with development-finance institutions in the US and UK to ensure funding for Ukraine's reconstruction before the war ends. The total cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine is estimated at $524 billion over the next decade — about 2.8 times the country's nominal gross domestic product for 2024, the World Bank said in February. Ukraine's energy, real estate and transportation sectors are top candidates to court interest from foreign investors. Its emerging military-technology sector, which now counts more than 200 drone firms, may also be an investment attraction, she said. More investor interest will be on show in July at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome. Monaco warned that a lot of investors' interest still hinges on the signing of a peace deal. 'We still have a war to get through,' she said. 'It's difficult to start major investment projects when things are still being destroyed.' Aside from Russia's war on Ukraine, governments around the world are burdened by rising levels of sovereign debt, which has grown even amid persistently high borrowing costs. That's set to trigger more countries looking to sell assets to meet repayment obligations, Monaco added. 'We are coming to a point where we will see real actions from governments to deal with excessive debt levels,' Monaco said. 'We will start seeing more asset monetization.' That may also materialize with debt swaps, in which nations, with the help of development agencies and multilateral lenders, buy back some debt at a discount and designate the savings for projects such as energy and food security, she said. After decades of heavy travel — including many trips to Davos — Monaco, who enjoys scuba diving and skiing, is looking forward to doing it on her own terms. 'The inside of conference rooms and Starbucks look the same,' she said, 'whether you're in Beijing or New York.' With assistance from Daryna Krasnolutska. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Bloomberg
27-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Citigroup to Sell SRT Tied to $8 Billion of Corporate Loans
Citigroup Inc. is working on a significant risk transfer linked to a portfolio of about $8 billion of loans, according to people familiar with the matter. New York-based Citigroup is offloading credit risk on the portfolio of corporate loans, said the people, who asked not to be named because the deal is private. The SRT notes will be issued out of a program known as Terra, one of the people said.
