Citigroup unveils sweeping reorganisation, shares rise

The news: Citigroup shares ended higher overnight after the Wall Street bank unveiled a sweeping reorganisation that will strip out a layer of management and give more direct control to CEO Jane Fraser.

The numbers: The third-largest US bank by assets will shift from having two major business units to five divisions, whose heads will directly report to Fraser. Citi said there would be job cuts but no final decision had been made on the number of jobs to be eliminated. Citigroup shares ended 1.7% higher to USD42.37 each.

The context: The organisational revamp comes as Fraser battles to turn around the major US bank, which has been dogged by operational and regulatory issues and whose stock price has lagged behind peers. The bank said it was starting a 30-day period to realign the businesses and would release more details on the restructuring by the end of November.

What they said: "We have taken hard, consequential, tough decisions here. They are not going to be universally popular within our bank. It's going to make some of our people very uncomfortable. I am absolutely fine with that ... It is absolutely the right thing to do for our shareholders," Citi CEO Jane Fraser told investors in New York.