History of Citibank

Running head: HISTORY OF CITIBANK
History of Citibank
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Abstract
Citibank has been very successful in the banking industry and especially in the United States. The bank has achieved high growth to become one of the largest banks in the world. Its growth can be attributed to its high quality services and offering of a variety of banking products as well as non-banking products and services. This paper will look at the history of Citibank as well as the ethical standards that it has embraced to achiever the high growth. It will also address. it will also address the bank’s relation to the capital markets.
Citibank
Citibank is one of the major International banks and a branch of Citigroup. It was founded in 1812. It was initially referred to as the City Bank of New York. Citigroup was named the largest bank in the United States by assets where Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase held the first and the second positions respectively. The bank haws retail bank branches in over 160 countries around the world. It has 1400 offices and more than half of them are found in the United States. The latest branches of the bank have been opened in Philadelphia, Boston, Dallas and Houston. Other than offering the normal banking transactions, Citibank also offers credit cards, insurance, and other investment products (Stone & Brewster, 2004).
The bank has an online banking which is currently the most successful in all the fields boasting around 15 million customers. The bank was hard hit by the recent financial crisis that occurred between 2008 and 2009 leading to heavy losses especially on the mortgage assets. It was bailed out by the government in agreement that was not disclosed. It was initially given $25 billion and later in 2008, $25 billion was added to prevent it from collapsing. This investment in conjunction to guarantees of risky assets totaled to $306 billion amount which the Citibank has paid in full (Stone & Brewster, 2004).
Col. Samuel Osgood was the first president of the bank who was also the statesman. Later, the management of the institution was taken over by a world’s known businessman Moses Taylor in the 19th Century. The bank joined the new national banking system of the united state in 1863 where it changed its name to the National City Bank of New York. In 1868, the bank was named as one of the largest bank in the U.S. in 1897, the bank made a record of the first U.S bank to open a foreign department (Stone & Brewster, 2004). This added the bank’s popularity and led to increase in customers as a result of the prestige.
In 1914, the National City Bank sought for permit from the Federal Reserve Act to open a foreign banking office where it was granted. The permit made it to become the first bank in the United States to have an overseas branch. This branch was opened in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Many of the banks international offices were opened between 1901...