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It will continue to allocate resources to growth countries such as S'pore: CEO[SINGAPORE] Citigroup's strategy of allocating resources to Asia continues apace despite growing unease over the slowdown in some of the region's economies, said its chief executive Michael Corbat.self storageHe noted that the US was showing signs of recovery and that parts of Europe were still in recession. And even though Asia was slowing, it still offered more opportunities than the West.Eleven months into the job and visiting Singapore for the first time since he took the helm, Mr Corbat reaffirmed at a press conference the strategy of allocating resources to growth countries such as Singapore.A Citi veteran of about 30 years, Mr Corbat was head of Europe, Middle East and Africa before his surprise promotion last October.He said: "Our business model has become even more unique. We come to work in 100 countries, no other institution does that, what we saw through the crisis and still today, some of our competitors are pulling back in terms of the number of geographies they serve ... in terms of products, and the ability of our competitors to replicate our business model has become more difficult because pre-crisis, people could come in through mergers and acquisition, they could go buy and merge and grow."In the US and Europe, there is not much appetite from the regulators for the big banks to get bigger. Instead, regulators are focused on banks being too big to fail and insolvency, he pointed out.Citigroup itself was bailed out by the US government in 2008. The Government of Singapore Investment Corporation bought into the bank as a result of the crisis and is the biggest shareholder of New York-based Citigroup, owning almost 4 per cent of the bank's shares."Citi is a very different company today from what it was before the crisis," said Mr Corbat. "We are focused on banking and providing financial services to our clients, leveraging our unique network and the three secular trends of globalisation, digitisation and urbanisation. We have rebuilt our capital base and are now one of the strongest banks globally."Citi has pared non-core assets to less than 7 per cent of its balance sheet, divesting about 60 businesses. It has been profitable since 2010.While the third-largest US bank with 270,000 employees has been restructuring in the past five years, its model of having a global and diversified business remains intact and gives it an edge, said Mr Corbat."Somebody that wants to compete against us, they've got to organically grow, grow country by country, they've got to build branches, they've got to take deposits, they've got to go make loans, and in a global economy of just slower growth and lower interest rates, your time to recover investments is long. So the barriers to entry I would argue are higher."Citi is a major player in the global transactions business, which services central banks, financial institutions, corporates, investors and consumers to make payments and man迷你倉ge their cash."The strategy's right. Having said that, in a slower growth world, the world remains ... a challenging place. Growth is uneven, ranging from 7.5-7.6 per cent in China to parts of Europe still in recession. The way we come to work in those places have got to be different, have got to be cognisant and aligned against what's going on. Even with a slowing ... the growth rates of Asia are still above global averages."Global growth is likely to be about 2 per cent.Not only are Asian economies slowing, investors are questioning the higher risks exposed by expected tapering in the shape of current account deficits in India, Indonesia and Thailand or Malaysia's shrinking surplus."We've been through extensive QE (quantitative easing) in the US, Europe and Japan, so as that easing starts to pull back, it's having some impact, but the long view is clearly we want to continue to make those investments in our key markets."He noted that Singapore, while being an advanced economy, was very attractive since it is the world's No 1 wealth management centre and trade hub for the region.This dovetails with the fact that Citi is Asia's largest wealth manager with more than US$210 billion in assets under management across the private bank and consumer bank.Citi has a presence in 18 Asian markets and in 12 of them, it offers the full range of banking services. Eight - Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan - generated over US$1 billion in revenue each last year. Citi Asia Pacific, with 55,000 staff, is the largest region outside North America and accounts for close to a third of global net income. Asia-Pacific revenues for the most recent quarter were up 7 per cent at US$4 billion, while income before tax was up 28 per cent at US$1.7 billion.Mr Corbat said that the increasingly frequent regulatory changes were a global phenomenon, and the group was mindful of the things that regulators were pushing for and wanted to get done.Following restrictions on home and car loans, the Monetary Authority of Singapore this month introduced severe rules on unsecured debt, clamping down on credit card business, an area where Citi is strong in."The regulators' job is to protect the market. In Singapore, regulators are acting to protect the market. We've seen that around the world, what we'd like to see is harmonisation of regulations ... coordination, regionally and globally."Stephen Bird, Citibank chief executive, Asia-Pacific, noted that there was a global trend to be more sensitive to consumer credit to ensure sustainable and responsible use.As a major credit card player in Singapore and the largest in Asia, the bank is seeing similar moves focused on the responsible use of credit, he added.Citi is the largest bank employer in Singapore at 10,000-strong. This year, it hired 200 graduates from the local universities. About half of the workforce is in processing hubs and data centres, serving various businesses in 60 countries.自存倉