An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter 60 years op­er­at­ing in T&T, Citibank re­mains con­fi­dent that this coun­try‘s mar­ket re­mains prof­itable for the bank, which is part of a multi­na­tion­al, fi­nan­cial ser­vices cor­po­ra­tion head­quar­tered in New York.

This was re­vealed by Pablo del Valle, Citi’s Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca sub-clus­ter and bank­ing head, dur­ing an in­ter­view last Thurs­day at its lo­cal head of­fice at Queen’s Park East.

Del Valle said the bank, which turned 60 on June 9, is here to stay, as T&T has been for Citibank in its op­er­a­tion here, and the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion looks for­ward to many years of the con­tin­ued re­la­tion­ship.

Asked what about this coun­try’s econ­o­my makes Citi com­fort­able, “I think you’ve built a tremen­dous­ly strong cor­po­rate sec­tor. You have ex­cel­lent gov­er­nance and rule of law. The oil and gas sec­tor is some­thing that con­tin­ues to evolve, and we see con­tin­ued in­ter­est from for­eign multi­na­tion­als in ei­ther ex­port­ing to, or op­er­at­ing in, Trinidad. We con­tin­ue to see val­ue in our propo­si­tion to­wards this coun­try.”

On its web­site, Citibank T&T said it was es­tab­lished in 1965, and has pro­vid­ed fi­nan­cial so­lu­tions to cor­po­ra­tions, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, pub­lic sec­tor com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ments.

Citibank pro­vides strate­gic and fi­nan­cial ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices in­clud­ing merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions, fi­nan­cial re­struc­tur­ings, loans, syn­di­cat­ed loans, for­eign ex­change, cash man­age­ment and trade so­lu­tions.

In terms of for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment and which coun­try, with­in his man­date, has been per­form­ing, Del Valle said in the last 10 years that has been Mex­i­co.

“Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, to a less­er ex­tent, we still, as a sub-re­gion, need to ful­ly ex­tract the val­ue of be­ing close to large mar­kets, and that is some­thing that is still evolv­ing. Trinidad has to work on this as well as oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion. There’s work to be done, there are op­por­tu­ni­ties to be grasped, and with good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance and strate­gic clar­i­ty, I’m sure that many of our coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean will ad­dress some of those op­por­tu­ni­ties,” the ex­ec­u­tive dis­closed.

Delv­ing more in­to the bank op­er­a­tions, he said it op­er­ates in 96 coun­tries around the world, and as­sists clients with their cash man­age­ment needs, how to man­age liq­uid­i­ty, how to man­age their dig­i­tal pay­ments and make dig­i­tal col­lec­tions, their work­ing cap­i­tal needs (that is how they pay sup­pli­ers), how they col­lect from ven­dors, how they gen­er­ate work­ing cap­i­tal lines, how they fi­nance their ex­ports and their im­ports.

He not­ed the bank al­so helps clients get ac­cess to syn­di­cat­ed loans or bond of­fer­ings lo­cal­ly or in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“We help clients raise eq­ui­ty, not any of that in Trinidad yet, but we help clients raise eq­ui­ty in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. We help with ad­vi­so­ry, that is typ­i­cal­ly merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions ad­vi­so­ry. And that holis­tic prod­uct of­fer­ing helps our clients ma­neu­ver.”

Giv­ing more in­sight in­to the ac­qui­si­tions the bank in­ter­na­tion­al­ly has fa­cil­i­tat­ed, del Valle said the bank is see­ing a trend of its large cor­po­rate clients, grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in­to new mar­kets.

For ex­am­ple, he said, one is Castil­lo Her­manos, which is the largest brew­er and bev­er­age and food com­pa­ny in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. It just bought a com­pa­ny called Har­vest Hill in the Unit­ed States which makes a prod­uct called Sun­ny De­light, for US$1.5 bil­lion in its am­bi­tion to reach new ge­o­gra­phies.

“Castil­lo Her­manos had a small op­er­a­tion in the US and and ac­quir­ing Har­vest Hill is com­plete­ly com­ple­men­tary; it’s a big in­vest­ment and a new strate­gic path for the com­pa­ny.”

Del Valle said its oth­er large cor­po­rate client, ANSA McAL, ac­quired a chlo­rine com­pa­ny called Bleachtech, which is based in Cleve­land, Ohio, for US$327 mil­lion.

“We’ve helped them both with sourc­ing and fi­nanc­ing, and now we’re help­ing both in­te­grate those ac­qui­si­tions in­to their day-to-day op­er­a­tions.

Asked when last did Citibank T&T raise mon­ey for the gov­ern­ment, the bank’s coun­try man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Mitchell De Sil­va, chimed in and said 2014.

Pressed on why Citibank has not raised mon­ey for the T&T gov­ern­ment in 11 years, De Sil­va said, “The gov­ern­ment has a choice, like any of our clients. The gov­ern­ment has a com­pet­i­tive process, and near and equal to the mar­ket, and we’re part of those process­es. So it’s not for any oth­er rea­son.”

Re­struc­tur­ing

Cit­i­group, the par­ent com­pa­ny of Citibank, has been un­der­go­ing a glob­al re­struc­tur­ing process since March 2024. Del Valle said that that re­struc­tur­ing re­sponds to the bank’s glob­al strat­e­gy.

“Our glob­al strat­e­gy, again, is to be the pre-em­i­nent bank for clients with multi­na­tion­al needs, and al­so to fur­ther ‘prof­i­talise’ the bank. For Trinidad, that glob­al struc­ture has changed a cou­ple of the ways we do things, but it has not had a ma­jor im­pact on our pres­ence or our in­ten­tions in Trinidad. T&T re­mains un­al­tered,” he said.

As it re­lates to the fi­nan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the bank glob­al­ly, the ex­ec­u­tive said it is very well cap­i­talised, and high­ly liq­uid, which keeps the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion in a po­si­tion where cor­po­rates and sov­er­eigns want to do busi­ness with it, and the bank is out there to do more busi­ness.

Ques­tioned on whether the bank is look­ing to ex­pand fur­ther, del Valle said the bank does not have any coun­try pinned down as yet.

“We are cer­tain­ly eval­u­at­ing what oth­er mar­kets serve that pur­pose of us pro­vid­ing ser­vice from a glob­al as­pect to re­main pre­em­i­nent to our clients.”

Look­ing at the Guyana mar­ket, del Valle said Citibank has cov­ered the clients there re­mote­ly for a very long time, but does not have a pres­ence in the coun­try.

He in­di­cat­ed that Citibank has seen an uptick in the de­sire of clients to take on the Guyana econ­o­my.

“That’s both in the oil and gas sec­tor, which is a bit more log­i­cal, more nat­ur­al. But al­so, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, clients that have al­ready been op­er­at­ing in Guyana for a very long time, want to ex­pand what they do there.

“It’s an econ­o­my that has tremen­dous prospects, and I think we all should look with in­ter­est and fig­ure out bet­ter and more ef­fi­cient ways to serve that coun­try’s econ­o­my,” he added.

Fi­nan­cials

In April 2025, Cit­i­group re­port­ed first-quar­ter earn­ings of US$284 mil­lion, surg­ing by 62 per cent from a year ago, aid­ed by a 24 per cent rise in rev­enues.

In its pri­vate bank­ing di­vi­sion, rev­enues rose 16 per cent, year-on-year, to US$664 mil­lion; at the Wealth at Work seg­ment, rev­enues surged 48 per cent to US$268 mil­lion, and Cit­igold rev­enues rose 24 per cent to US$1.164 bil­lion, Cit­i­group said in a state­ment.

It said in to­tal, across the whole busi­ness, wealth rev­enues rose 24 per cent to US$2.1 bil­lion in the quar­ter, and ex­pens­es were broad­ly flat.

Al­so, client in­vest­ment as­sets in the wealth seg­ment stood at US$595 bil­lion, ris­ing 16 per cent com­pared to the same quar­ter of 2024.