Citigroup's Record British Fine Is a Bad Look for Bankers
The U.S. banking giant has been hit by the PRA’s biggest fine for reporting failures. The cavalier attitude in global finance hasn’t been fixed entirely.
Uncapital Citi.
Photographer: Justin Chin/BloombergIn the aftermath of the financial crisis, we’ve become accustomed to banks being slapped with sanctions running into the billions. So at the equivalent of $57 million, Citigroup Inc.’s new fine for reporting failures could well go unnoticed. That would be a mistake.
The third-largest U.S. bank, with assets in excess of $2 trillion, inaccurately reported its capital and liquidity in the U.K. because of dysfunctional systems, governance and controls, the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority said this week. This is not what Britain expects of a systemically important bank, the PRA added, explaining why it was imposing a record fine.