Poor Charles Prince. He is being threatened by the press, his largest shareholder who he recently visited in Saudi Arabia
The big knock on Prince is that he would not keep costs down. But, at least he could have spent money on some new branches in the
US
. They can’t be all that expensive.
As it turns out, Citi (C) only has one-sixth the branches in the
United States
that Bank of America (BAC) does.
But, Prince did not get to be CEO by accident. He is clever as a fox. The big financial services company plans to use its Smith Barney branches as quasi-bank locations and solve most of the problem by changing the names on the front door. Put in a teller, and you are all set.
If the idea works, it could help Citi close the huge gulf in domestic deposits between it and Bank of America. BAC has $598 billion to Citi’s $234 billion.
Prince is smarter than
gives him credit for. A branch by any other name is a branch.
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.
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