Citigroup Inc chief executive officer Jane Fraser. — Bloomberg
NEW YORK: Citigroup Inc chief executive officer Jane Fraser says that clients who’d been waiting on the sidelines to do deals are focused on moving forward with mergers and acquisitions (M&As) as they see that scale is needed to compete.
Clients were awaiting an “unlocking” before embarking on M&A and are now starting to ramp up plans in the wake of Trump’s election win, Fraser said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
It’s a “scale game” across industries, she said.
“There’s a lot of pent-up demand,” she said. “But at the same time, I see particularly in the United States, which is the majority of the M&A activity at the moment, and it’s likely to be that way – it is game on and the clients are on the front foot.”
The Wall Street executive has set out an agenda to improve returns at the bank, where shares have lagged its main rivals in recent years.
After an overhaul of the firm’s structure, she’s hired fresh leadership to raise standards and attempted to sharpen the bank’s focus on cutting expenses as well as focusing its balance sheet on businesses that generate the highest returns.
The strategy is working, Fraser said, pointing to the bank’s third quarter results. But there’s more to be done, she said.
“We still have more work to do,” she said. “We’ve successfully reorganised the institution, we’ve realised benefits from it, we’ve realised benefits from the cost take-outs we have done from divesting,” she said.
“Ultimately our transformation will lead to less expenses.”
Among recent moves this year, Citigroup has pledged to work with Apollo Global Management Inc on billions of dollars in private-credit deals, sold off parts of its wealth business to streamline operations and put its services business front and centre by advertising its global network to investors.
The banking sector has been boosted by the prospect of a bonfire of regulations under a Trump administration.
Fraser said in an interview last week that the lender expected tighter capital regulations – known as Basel III Endgame – to be significantly eased, if they’re enacted at all. — Bloomberg
