Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser said the company’s efforts to exit its retail-banking operations in Mexico are taking longer than anticipated, though the Wall Street giant remains in active dialog on the plan.
(Bloomberg) — Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser said the company’s efforts to exit its retail-banking operations in Mexico are taking longer than anticipated, though the Wall Street giant remains in active dialog on the plan.
Fraser said there’s “an enormous body of work” going on in the country to separate the firm’s consumer, small-business and middle-market banking operations that it’s divesting from the institutional business it plans to keep. The New York-based company continues to weigh both a sale and an initial public offering of the unit, long known as Banamex.
“It has taken a little longer than expected just given everything that’s been going on in the markets of late,” Fraser said Monday during the firm’s annual stockholders’ meeting. “We’re going to be very committed, as always, to take the path that’s in the best interest of shareholders.”
Investors are closely watching the lender’s progress on the divestiture, which it first announced it was pursuing over a year ago, because the firm has said a deal for the business could temporarily impact capital levels. That’s partly hindered Citigroup’s ability to restart share buybacks in recent quarters. The company hadn’t provided an update on the push to exit Banamex when it announced earnings earlier this month.
Also at the meeting, shareholders preliminarily approved a series of proposals made by the firm’s management on executive pay and the slate of directors for the company’s board. At the same time, investors shot down a series of stockholder pitches on climate change.
Fraser said the company benefited from the turmoil that beset regional banks last month, noting Citigroup saw an influx of deposits as customers flocked to lenders they viewed as safe. But, she added, such activity has slowed in recent weeks.
“We’ve seen a calming of the market turmoil,” Fraser said, “and the outflows from stressed banks has eased significantly from where it was a few weeks ago.”
(Updates with earnings announcement in fourth paragraph. A previous version of this story corrected the spelling of Banamex in headline.)
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