Citigroup Names New Head of Consumer Banking

Stephen Bird, who runs Citigroup’s Asia Pacific region, will take over as Citi’s chief of global consumer banking on June 1, Citi CEO Michael Corbat told employees in a memo on Monday (April 13).

Bird will move to New York from Hong Kong, with the goal of pulling together all of Citi’s regional consumer banking groups into a cohesive unit with a single customer experience. Corbat wrote in the memo that Bird “is exceptionally well-qualified to continue the transformation of our local consumer businesses into one Global Consumer Bank,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

The move to New York will also give better visibility to Bird for the board and U.S. regulators. Bird is considered a candidate to eventually replace Corbat.

A 17-year Citi veteran who has spent much of his career in Asia, Bird kept the Asia Pacific region reliably profitable for Citi even during the financial crisis. Last year, Asia was Citi’s second-most-profitable region with 21 percent of Citi’s revenue. The bank has also used Asia to test new ideas for consumer products, like mini-branches, before expanding their use in other regions, The Journal reported.

Bird will take over the global consumer banking job from Manuel Medina-Mora, who has also served as Citigroup co-president. Medina-Mora announced in February that he will retire. That will leave Jamie Forese, who runs the Citigroup unit that includes investment banking, as sole Citigroup president.

It also means a job reshuffling among Citi executives who were also seen as short-list candidates for the job that Bird landed. Francisco Aristeguieta, who has been Citi’s Latin America chief, will be the new head of Asia Pacific and will move to Hong Kong from Miami. Jane Fraser, who oversees Citi’s global mortgages along with U.S. consumer and commercial banking, will take over in Latin America, moving to Miami from New York. It will be up to Bird to choose her replacement.

Fraser, who has a reputation as a troubleshooter for the bank, will be responsible for cleaning up the mess at Citi’s Mexican subsidiary Banamex, which has been the target of money laundering investigations as well as a fraud revealed last year that cut 2013 earnings by $235 million, according to Bloomberg News.