An agreement has been reached on the German consumer banking arm of Citibank, with the operation being sold to Credit Mutuel of France.
The deal will see the cash reserves of Citibank around GBP3.9 billion richer and help the bank on its way to the larger target of selling around GBP200 billion worth of assets over the coming three years. The bank was badly hit by the sub prime mortgage collapse in the United States and is now working to realign the business.
As well as selling assets Citibank is also looking to shed over 16,000 jobs in the same three year period. This is again to re-structure the organisation and will go hand in hand with the selling of businesses such as their German banking operation.
Northern Rock has named a new chief executive to lead the government funded bank forwards.
Gary Hoffman, previously the vice chairman at Barclays has taken on the role, replacing Andy Kuipers who had been at the bank for the last 20 years. Mr Hoffman will officially take over at the end of August and is very excited to be given the task of heading up Northern Rock.
When Mr Kuipers, the last person from the previous board remaining, leaves it will signify a new start for the Northern Rock, bringing an optimism for customers, staff and investors that the future will be better than the recent past.
A new study carried out by Saga Insurance has found that those over 50 years of age do not like to discuss money unless they really have to, unlike younger people who are much more at ease with it.
However there are some things that no-one is particularly comfortable discussing, no matter what their age. The Saga Insurance study revealed that discussions regarding earnings and salary figures are disliked by all categories, with respondents saying they would try and get out of such a discussion if they could.
On the subject of discussing finances generally, around half of those involved in the study told Saga Insurance that it was not an appropriate subject to discuss, whilst almost ten percent of people said they would be embarrassed to discuss their personal finance situation with anyone.
