Citi to Narrow Focus of U.S. Branch Network

Citigroup plans to narrow the focus of its U.S. branch network to six major metropolitan areas, while also catering largely to wealthy customers, a report says.

Author:: Joseph Woelfel
Publish date:: Sep 24, 2009 5:01 AM EDT

Updated from 12:58 a.m. EDT

NEW YORK (

TheStreet

) --

Citigroup

plans to narrow the focus of its U.S. branch network to six major metropolitan areas, a report says, while also catering largely to wealthy customers.

The

Wall Street Journal

, citing people familiar with the matter, said Citigroup plans to limit its overall consumer lending in the U.S. primarily to credit cards and "jumbo" mortgages.

Citi executives will present details of the plan, in which its banking operations will be concentrated in New York, Washington, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, to the bank's board next month.

Citi also is looking to sell its roughly 120 branches in Texas and reconsidering whether it makes sense to maintain a major presence in Boston and Philadelphia, where it holds less than 0.5% of total deposits, the

Journal

reports.

Citigroup has 1,001 U.S. branches, compared with more than 5,000 each for

Bank of America

(BAC) - Get Report

JPMorgan Chase

(JPM) - Get Report

and

Wells Fargo

(WFC) - Get Report

, the newspaper notes.

Scaling back in the U.S. could spark criticism in Washington, since the government owns a 34% stake, the