Citigroup Inc. is axing hundreds of jobs, primarily impacting the investment banking and mortgage units. This round of job cuts will hardly affect one per cent of the workforce which has about 2.4 lakh members.
Interestingly, Citigroup invested heavily in the upgradation of its technology infrastructure. The Bank has always maintained that spending on technology will reduce the dependency on manual labour in the long run, as processes become more efficient.
The Bank has been working on converting processes that require intense manual labour into processes enabled by technology.
As far as the investment banking unit is concerned, the Bank has been struggling amidst a slowdown across the industry. Revenue has already dipped 53 per cent compared to the previous year, and the trend may even continue. The demand for mortgage has also fallen recently with prices going up and mortgage rates spiking too.
These job cuts are said to be routine and very much part of the Group’s business plan. While managers have not been specifically instructed to cut jobs, the various divisions are dealing with various causes for layoffs.
Meanwhile, in India, where Citibank began operations in 1902, in Kolkata, the Bank has sold its entire retail banking assets to Axis Bank. The latter has acquired Citigroup’s India consumer business for Rs 11,603 crore. That means, all of Citibank’s consumer business in India will now be transferred to Axis Bank.
