Citigroup aligns emerging markets with fixed income
Citigroup has formed a new global business group called Fixed Income, Currencies & Commodities (FICC). It combines the firm’s fixed-income business with the emerging market sales and trading operation.
In an internal release sent to employees this week, Tom Maheras, global head of capital markets, promoted the reorganization as “a natural evolution toward providing an integrated global platform best positioned to serve our clients”.
The truth, however, is that this finally removes one of the vestigial standalone Citibank entities. Ever since Citibank took over Salomon Brothers there has been a separation between the old Citibank emerging markets business and the rest of the firm. This had built up organically and is highly successful. Its chief for the past two years, Paco Ybarra, reported separately to Maharas alongside co-heads of fixed income Geoff Coley and Randy Barker.
No other bank has branches with treasury operations in more than 100 countries. Citi’s senior management will claim that they have done a reasonable job of putting it all together. But the fact that emerging markets has finally been folded into the wider organization suggests that those efforts have not been entirely successful.