Citigroup’s Frank Bisignano bestrides the narrow world of global custody like a colossus. The 46-year-old Brooklyn native oversees the bank’s Global Transaction Services empire, which encompasses cash management, trade and securities services. The last group oversees more than $7 trillion in custody assets and does business in some 90 countries.
Thus the $240 billion in assets that Bisignano picked up last month when GTS acquired several of ABN Amro’s local custody businesses around the world might seem like a drop in the Zuider Zee. But to the New Yorkbased GTS chief, it was an important extension of the custody market’s multinational consolidation to local markets.
“We have seen the global custody business concentrate in the hands of fewer and fewer providers, and the same will happen to local custody businesses,” contends Bisignano. Local providers, he says, have no choice but to start “looking at the cost of servicing this business.”
Citi should reap marketing opportunities from ABN Amro’s close relationships with Dutch clients; the deal also gives it added clout in Greece, India, Indonesia, Poland, Russia, South Korea and Taiwan, where ABN Amro has local custody businesses.
As wide a swath as Bisignano’s GTS cuts abroad, it is overshadowed in its backyard by behemoths like State Street and J.P. Morgan Chase. The ten-year Citi veteran is keeping a close eye out for U.S. businesses that can narrow the gap. Late last year Bisignano bought Forum Financial, a fund administrator whose services complement Citi’s.
“We are a big fund administration player in Europe and Asia, but we need to punch our weight in the U.S.,” he says.
