Citi India pivots to corporate banking post retail unit sale

Citi India is banking on a large pipeline of equity listings, surging deals through cross-border mergers and acquisitions and providing financing solutions to corporate customers to expand its business, chief executive officer K Balasubramanian said.

- Shayan Ghosh

“The Indian IPO market is also booming. It has been like this for last 18 plus months,” he said. “If you look at any newspaper, the first 10 pages are all IPO advertisements.”

Local listings crossed ₹1.77 trillion this year, surpassing last year's high of ₹1.73 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Citi can offer what local companies are unable to, Balasubramanian said. “We can actually help them put foreign currency money into their wallets or we can help them tap the international market for bonds. We could help them to take money from the equity market, both as pure equity as well as convertibles,” he said.

Following the sale of its consumer business in March 2023, Citi banks on firms to drive growth in India. Two years after the completion of the sale of its consumer banking business in India to private lender Axis Bank for ₹11,603 crore, Citi seems to have made up for the loss of its retail business.