: Citi closes sale of Indonesia retail banking franchise, declines to comment on layoffs

Citigroup Inc.’s stock C was up 0.2% on Monday as the bank said it closed the sale of its retail operations in Indonesia in its ongoing plan to scale back its overseas operations. Citi will continue its institutional banking efforts there. Citi completed the sale to UOB Indonesia its retail banking, credit card, and unsecured lending businesses, as well as the transfer of employees. Citi has now closed sales in nine of14 markets including Australia, Bahrain, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, in addition to Indonesia. Citi continues to wind down business in China, Korea and Russia. It’s also pursuing an initial public offering of its consumer, small business and middle market banking operations in Mexico. Separately, Citi did not comment on reports of job cut notifications starting this week as part of a company plan to reduce management to eight layers from 13. Citi has previously disclosed plans to communicate and implement by the end of November its “next layer of changes” to further align its teams with its new business model under Chief Executive Jane Fraser.

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