Since 1812 Citbank Has Been A Powerhouse Bank

Originally, the City Bank of NY in 1919 they morphed into First National City Bank of NY very quickly. Citibank is now a part of the massive Citigroup, one of the largest companies in the world. The consumer arm of this giant is named Citibank and it was the largest bank in America until the recent economic crash retrenched the banking system with several of the larger banks merging or buying others. Exact number won't be known until 2009 financials are released but the venerable Citibank is still near the top spot.

Samuel Osgood originally founded the Bank and with connections from being the Postmaster General of the U.S. it grew quickly. A man named Moses Taylor took over the management and with his business sense and close connections to John Jacob Astor it became a finance center for Taylor's business conglomerate. Then in 1863, while the Civil War raged, the bank joined the national banking system as National City Bank of NY, under Lincoln's Treasury Secretary's new plan to help finance the war.

In 1986 the bank was the first institution to join the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and only a year later it opened a foreign department to facilitate overseas banking. It then quickly opened the first ever overseas branch for any bank in the world, this one in Argentina. In 1919 the banks records indicated assets of $1,000,000,000. Charles E. Mitchell was named president and under his tutelage the bank grew quickly, and he was also named chairman in 1929.

It was not until the nineteen seventies that Citibank took on the name that it still has today. First National City Bank and the First National City Corporation were renamed Citibank and Citicorp. When this renaming happened, all the owners of the bank were then shareholders of the new concern. In late 2008, Citibank had to be refinanced by the United States government. There was an initial aid of twenty-five billion loaned to this corporation. There was another twenty-five billion invested in them subsequently. The Citigroup corporation now has about three hundred and six billion dollars in risky loans|lendings|assets|. As of now, Citibank is working on establishing itself once more in this economy.

You can find branches of Citibank in over one hundred countries around the world. The larger part of Citibank's offices that are in the United States can be found mostly in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and a few other major cities. This financial institutions offers not only all the standard banking transactions, but they also offer investment products, insurance and credit cards.

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