Bloomberg reports that Michael Corbat, Citigroup’s new chief executive officer, says he wants to run a more efficient bank. That means rousing or cutting one of Wall Street’s least productive workforces.
Citigroup generated about $206,000 of revenue for each employee through the first nine months of the year, down 7.5% from the same period in 2011, while rivals including Wells Fargo & Co. posted increases, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Excluding a one-time writedown of $4.7bn, Citigroup’s productivity rose less than 1%.
While the third-biggest U.S. bank cut more than 100,000 jobs with Vikram Pandit as CEO, it probably will end the year as the only one of the six largest U.S. lenders with less revenue per employee than in 2005, according to estimates of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. By contrast, the figure for JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) will have increased 19%.
Citigroup isn’t 'the most efficiently run bank', said William Fitzpatrick, an analyst at Manulife Asset Management, which oversees about $800m including the lender’s shares. 'Ultimately we do need to see better operating performance'.
Revenue per employee aggregated for the six banks - JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) - climbed 2.6% in the first nine months from a year earlier. The firms cut more than 25,000 jobs over the 12 months ended September 30th, and revenue edged up 0.3%.
Hit the link below to access the complete Bloomberg article:
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