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From Financial Supermarket To Supermarket

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by Felix Salmon
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Feb 20 2008 12:00am EDT

From Financial Supermarket to Supermarket

Citi, it seems, is exiting its consumer-finance business - at least in the key foreign markets of Japan, Mexico, and the UK, according to the WSJ. And Citi's loss might well be Wal-Mart's gain.

The move gives some insight into the priorities of career investment banker Vikram Pandit now that he is CEO of a global consumer bank. It's not quite as drastic as it sounds: Citi has historically catered to the top tier of retail customers in its global operations, and the low-level consumer operations it's now shuttering or selling are a relatively new development.

That said, however, this is a key reversal of Citi's strategy in Mexico, where the future of banking undoubtedly lies not with the elite but rather with the underserved majority. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the winning bidder for Citi's Mexican operations was Wal-Mart, which already has a banking license in the country and is moving aggressively into financial services there.

It might be that Citi has proved ill-suited to judging the creditworthiness of poorer consumers; Wal-Mex, I suspect, won't have that problem.

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