Citigroup Chief Says Supermarket Bank Not Right for Times
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Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit said supermarket banking, a strategy pursued by his firm in past decades to provide all financial products including insurance, no longer fits the times.
The 1998 merger of Citicorp with insurer Travelers Group Inc. “didn’t turn out to be everything people thought it was going to be,” Pandit said today during a presentation at Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. “The focus of that merger, which was supermarket banking or financial supermarket, is a strategy that I don’t believe is right for the times. Not only that, I don’t believe it’s right for our bank.”