Business NEWS
British bank Barclays buying Citi’s Portuguese card business arm, will it to Barclaycard
By Amarendra Bhushan for CEOWORLD Magazine Updated:September 29, 2009
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Barclays (UK:BARC) (BCS) said Tuesday that it has agreed to acquire Citigroup Inc. (C) Portuguese credit card business.
Under the terms of the deal, Barclays will acquire around 400,000 credit card accounts, with gross assets of roughly 644 million euros ($942 million), of which substantially all relate to receivables. |
Barclays said it will integrate the business into its existing Barclays Portugal unit and, over time, will rebrand existing Citi cards as Barclaycard. Completion of the deal is expected to occur before the end of 2009. Barclays did not disclose financial terms of the deal, though previous reports have indicated it would pay less than $100 million.
The deal is expected to complete before the end of the year subject to clearance from regulatory authorities. Citi cards are expected to be rebranded under the Barclaycard name.
Unlike some of its rival British banks, Barclays has successfully avoided state control, despite a ferocious global financial crisis that erupted back in 2007.
Earlier Tuesday, U.K. newspaper The Times reported that Barclays was eyeing the banking division of U.K. insurer Standard Life (SL.LN), which could be worth GBP200 million to GBP300 million.
“We are looking at acquisitions in Western Europe,” a bank spokesman said. He declined to comment on Standard Life specifically.
Meanwhile, Citigroup, which has been hard hit by the global financial crisis and is now 34%-owned by the U.S. government, is pulling back its presence in the U.S. and abroad.
In a recent presentation, CEO Vikram Pandit classified the bank’s Western Europe retail banking and cards portfolios as non-core assets.
“The transaction is in line with Citi’s goal to reduce assets, tightly manage risks and optimize the value of assets in Citi Holdings, while working to generate long-term profitability and growth from Citicorp, which comprises its core franchise,” Citigroup said in a separate statement.
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