Citigroup Inc (C)

[Dallas66]

Citigroup Inc.C +2.89% reported its third-quarter profit rose as revenue jumped while also saying it plans to pull back from retail banking in a raft of smaller countries.

Citigroup reported net income of $3.44 billion, up from $3.23 billion a year earlier. When stripping out one-time items and accounting adjustments, the bank’s profit was $1.15 a share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected $1.12 a share.

Revenue rose to $19.6 billion, or $19.98 billion on an adjusted basis. Analysts had expected adjusted revenue of $19.05 billion.

The most international U.S. bank, Citigroup said it plans to exit retail banking in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Guam, the Czech Republic, Egypt and Hungary. It confirmed it will be exiting its retail banking in Japan and said it is exiting its consumer finance business in Korea.

Citigroup, which has institutional customers in about 100 countries, has said it wants to home in on areas with “the highest growth potential” for consumer banking, eschewing some smaller cities and slower-growth countries.

The bank suffered a setback earlier this year when the Federal Reserve rejected its dividend and share-buyback plans, citing the difficulty it was having measuring how a severe recession would affect all of its global operations.

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/10/14/citi-reports-stronger-than-expected-results/?mod=yahoo_hs