Citigroup takes the plunge

Citigroups has announced 'aggressive growth plans" for China, the Financial Times writes after the launch of the bank's start of its own credit card. Citigroups belongs with a small group of other international banks, HSBC and Standard Chartered, to the ones who intend to bank on China's future on a big scale, but is the first to really announce bigger plans.
Citigroup is the largest financial services company in the world.
Charles Prince, CEO and the group's chairman spoke in Shanghai en had been meeting top-level Chinese administrators in Beijing before that.
Prince indicated he would like to invest in the China Construction Bank, possible take a large chunk of their planned IPO, expected early next year. The plunge will be a jump into a still unknown future and Prince admitted that concrete plans had not been made, as the due diligence process had not yet started.
That will be an interesting process, so shortly after two other famous Chinese financial institutions, the insurer China Life and the other bank ICBC got into trouble last week as the country's auditor discovered large scale irregularities.
Other foreign financial institutions have taken a more careful approach and focus mostly on the customers they take from their home markets outside China.
China's banks are not only technical bankrupt, they have a hard time in delivering a decent service too. Only now transfers between banks are possible in China, reports Wang Jianshuo, while before that people had to walk with cash between outlets of banks, well at least three outlets of the Bank of China in downtown Shanghai.