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Citigroup

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WHAT HAPPENED AT CITIGROUP? (9-310-004)
4. In 2006 the largest investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was concerned that the bank “overearned and underinvested”: What did he mean?

To simplify the statement “overearned and underinvested”, in 2006, Citigroup’s strategy focused excessively on earnings growth and not enough on proper investment tactics. The initial strategy under CEO Sandy Weill was to grow through acquisitions, and eventually Citigroup became known as a “financial supermarket”. When Weill retired, Prince had inherited a cluster of companies that were never fully integrated and he never prioritized for the company to invest. There was no communication between each individual business units, and as a result, there were multiple technology systems and no standardization or integration of these systems.
Succeeding Weill as CEO was Chuck Prince, and he wanted to move away from acquisitions and to grow the company through organic growth, which was a complete change from prior strategies. Prince aimed to increase Citigroup’s net income by 50% from 38% through international business in 2002.
Then in 2005, strategy shifted from organic growth to more risk taking because “you have to take more risk to if you want to earn more”. One of the main issues by taking in more risk was a need for more risk controls and oversight, though it appeared to be “seriously inadequate”. There was “insufficient investment in systems, incorrect assumptions were built into the risk models, and there was inappropriate segregation of duties between those charged with overseeing risk and those who had revenue responsibility and took the risk in the fixed income division”.
As Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was one of the largest investors in Citigroup, with a 4.3% ownership stake, his involvement in Citigroup was of personal vested interest, as his own finances were correlated to the company’s success. Though revenues kept increasing incrementally, expenses were creeping up higher. In the second quarter of 2006, revenues increased 9%, but expenses increased 15% over the same period. One thing to note was that only 2% of that increase was because of investment or branch expansion. This is why Talal thought that Citigroup should take draconian methods to cut down their expenses.

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