Boston, MA 12/12/2013 (wallstreetpr) – Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) has announced the inclusion of Duncan Hennes to its board of directors. There could be several factors which promoted the bank’s chairman Mike O’Neill to get Hennes into his company’s board, but what can clearly be seen is that Hennes brings a wealth of knowledge in risk management and finance to the bank.
At this moment when the bank is focused on its recovery from the financial crisis, it needs a powerful risk management and finance committee to guide its recovery efforts.
Hennes is known in Wall Street as a multitalented money manager. His experience spans banking and hedge funds management. He is a co-founder of Promontory Financial Group which is bank advisory firm. He was also the CEO of Soros Fund Management.
The 57 money manager was also at Atrevida Partners LLC as the fund’s principal. Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) will surely love to have him in the board. He joins the bank as the 14th board member. The bank has been in a recruitment mode in recent times to bring in fresh talents to its operations. This is very important considering that as the third largest bank in the U.S., C’s recovery has not been quite impressive, although several steps have been made in the right direction.
The bank is still faced with high operating expenses and the need to expand its customer base. The bank has lost several of its customers since the financial crisis and it needs to attract them back.
The environment of low interest rates, tepid loan condition and industry competition are challenges which the bank needs to deal with effectively.
Already Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) is trying to make big presence in commodity trade where it has announced plans to hire additional staff, about 80 new people, to its commodity unit. This is happening at a time when peers such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) and Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) have shown indications to recoil from the same.
