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| Best Global transaction services house: Citi |
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| Also nominated: HSBC |
Being big can sometimes mean losing focus on your clients. This is not the case, though, for Citi’s Global Transaction Services business, and specifically its Treasury and Trade Services (TTS) arm. TTS comprises Citi’s cash management and trade finance businesses and in many ways it is the engine room of everything that Citi looks to do around the world. The sheer scale of the business shows how important it is and how good Citi is at doing it. It has 22,000 employees based in 96 countries and does business with a further 43. Every month the business generates $300 million of net earnings. It runs margins 20% to 30% higher than its competitors’.
The business generates about $7.2 billion a year, of which about $1.2 billion comes from trade finance and $6 billion from cash management. Although other banks have an approach that is more balanced between cash and trade, Citi is nevertheless strong at the high end of trade finance, especially on work with export-credit and other official agencies.