Citi, please don’t go.

I had always thought I would become an accountant after graduating university, until my internship with Citi Hong Kong during the summer before my graduation. Those pivotal 2 months swayed me away from a potential career in accounting and I rejoined Citi as a full-time management trainee and ended up spending the first 12 years of my career there. In that time, I contributed to building many of their businesses in Hong Kong, Singapore Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, etc. Even when I left Citi to join its competitor, Standard Chartered Bank, I fought hard and fair with what I learned from Citi. I went on to found WeLab with everything that I learned from my 12 years at Citi. My high aspirations, my technical skill set and leadership style was forged from what I learned in Citi. I am forever grateful for my time at Citi. Most importantly, I am grateful that I learned how to be a good leader from everyone at Citi - many of whom are probably as sad as me today when they read the news last night. It saddens me even more when I read the emotional reactions from current Citi employees on social media this morning. As I read through the news and official statements on Citi’s decision to exit 13 markets, I felt it must have been a really difficult decision to make on the company side. And yet, it also made me realise that this is another classic example of capitalism and the debate about which is more important: shareholder value or stakeholder value? Oftentimes, people narrowly think that stakeholders are just your investors and board members. To me, stakeholders include EVERYONE a company touches - the Citi customers, the current and former employees and the community at large. It is not just Citi's investors. 

So this is what I want to say to Citi:

a) As an ex-employee: you have trained up generations of banking talents in the these 13 markets who have moved on to achieve great things and built the economy in their local countries (e.g. the CEO of Mastercard, DBS, Monzo all worked at Citi at one stage of their careers). There must be other examples of finance ministers, economic advisers and CEOs who have also benefitted from their Citi trainings.

b) As a customer: you have provided great, friendly services. I have been using your retail banking services since I was a university student 20 years ago. So what is going to happen to my ever green reward points or fee-free international withdrawals?

c) As a competitor: you have always come up with the most forward-thinking products at the forefront of digital innovation. You have inspired your competitors to fight even harder and smarter.

You have built a strong and loyal community of ex-Citi people. Many of my current colleagues at WeLab were from Citi. My ex-Citi boss from 15 years ago now serves on our WeLab Bank board. These people work well together because they were well trained. I even met my wife from Citi and some of our happiest days were when we used to work together. A few hours ago I met with seven of my colleagues at WeLab to discuss this Citi decision only to discover that three out of the seven of us met our respective wives at Citi. You probably have a higher match rate than any dating app out there!

Finally, on the announcement last night. People woke up realising they no longer have a job by watching Bloomberg after dedicating 20 some years of their life to Citi. Customers too. What a heartless and heart-breaking way to break the news. Citi’s decision to announce via an investor earnings call, felt like your girlfriend breaking up with you via SMS.

Anyway, we urge you to pause and rethink. Listen to all of your stakeholders, and not just your shareholders - do not fall into the capitalism trap of maximizing numbers on your financial statements. We are not just a ROE or ROA analysis done by someone sitting in the head office. And knowing Citi, my guess is there will be a change in leadership in a few years’ time to expand and diversify back into these Asian markets by paying 3x the price.

You have reported a first-quarter net income of $7.9bn, up from $2.5bn. How much is enough? And I know you want to "capture the strong growth and attractive returns the wealth-management business", but what about the rest of your customers? We heard from you that in many of these exiting markets you do not have the scale to compete. Have you considered fighting smarter with nimbleness and agility, rather than competing with scale, capital and the number of branches (aka the old-school way)? As we learn from the David and Goliath story, great people succeed not in spite of their disadvantages, but because of it and they don’t give up easily. 

I am not sure if you have solid plans to sell or close down these operations yet. Maybe you will generate a few calls from interested buyers from the announcement last night, but please realise that they can buy your assets at 1.2x book value, but they cannot buy what you have built over the last century in Asia – it is also about the people, the culture and the legacy in the community - this is priceless.

Citi, you have given us so much. You have given me so much. I feel that it is the right time and our responsibility to pull you back from jumping off the bridge or doing something stupid. At the end of the day, these decisions affect real people, families and larger communities in immeasurable ways. Let this remind the rest of us that we are responsible to the community and ALL of our stakeholders, and not just to the shareholders.

Don’t just do better, be better.