Despite falling short of overtaking Deutsche Bank, Citi continued its recent strong run in Euromoney’s FX survey, leapfrogging Barclays and UBS to take second position. The bank’s plan to take its FX division back to the summit, a position it last held in 2002, is paying dividends. "This is not a one-year move," says Anil Prasad, Citi’s global head of FX and local markets. "It’s the culmination of a three- to four-year serious effort to focus the entire global foreign exchange business on moving up in market share."
Citi’s performance is all the more impressive given that as recently as 2009, a dark period for the bank overall, it had been cast aside from its main rivals, sitting in fifth position and 13 percentage points off the lead. Without a serious electronic offering, and hampered by a federal bailout and a damaged credit rating, Citi, under the leadership of Prasad, hatched a plan.
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| Anil Prasad, Citi’s global head of FX and local markets |
Prasad says: "We got to a point where we were definitely the most profitable FX business in the world, and now we have to concentrate on getting our market share to the top."