Amid calls from his shareholders to cut expenses, Citigroup CEO Charles Prince maintains that it is not in Citigroup’s best interest for it to “starve the business” to boost its lagging stocks, says a Wall Street Journal report.
Prince is even fielding complaints from the group’s largest individual shareholder, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who has called for Prince to slash expenses.
Though Citigroup continues to bring in profits, pressure on the management team Prince organized is forcing them to demonstrate that they can “organically” increase revenue amid increased spending of investor money to expand the business internally.Citigroup’s stock sits in the red for the year thus far, down more than 2%, while its competition has seen their stock jump ahead. Bank of America is up roughly 10% and JPMorgan is up about 12% for the year.
Citigroup’s net revenue is up 6%. Its operating expenses are up more than 16% since the beginning of 2005.