Citigroup’s newly organized global transactions services division (which includes securities services as well as cash and trade finance) seems ready to flex its muscles.
The group is headed by Frank Bisignano, an operations executive who has worked for Sandy Weill for most of his career: Bisignano showed both his own ambition and the latitude he has been given by the bank’s executives when Citigroup won the Standard Life outsourcing contract earlier this year in the UK; now it seems a more profound effort is under way in the US.
Sources say that Citi is close to finalizing a deal that will give it control of the Denver-based funds accounting group at OppenheimerFunds.
Oppenheimer, which has $130 billion in assets and is part of the Mass Mutual family, was initially looking to outsource its back office, but sources say that discussions quickly progressed and the outcome was the proposed sale of that part of Oppenheimer’s business.
The terms of the deal are far from clear – indeed, a Mass Mutual source said that the discussions were not finalized and that in fact the Springfield, MA-based insurer was still talking to other parties. A Citigroup spokesman declined comment, but a source close to the deal that while the deal was not inked, only a “surprise” would derail it.
For those following investment operations outsourcing – and that would include all the major custodian banks and virtually every investment manager – Citi is emerging as a serious player, and one prepared (as the terms of the Standard Life deal suggested) to pay real money to build scale.