Citigroup Inc. CEO Michael Corbat said he’s ready to deploy resources to grow “even faster” in a world of synchronized economic growth from Japan to Europe.
"We’ve taken the rear-view mirror off,” with regards to the bank’s crisis-era struggles, and are looking “out the windscreen in terms of where we’re trying to take the company," Corbat said in a Bloomberg Television interview Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "We’ve been very clear in terms of our focus and our areas of growth. Those areas of growth have now only been enhanced, and we’re fully prepared to put the resources” to “grow them even faster."
Corbat’s bullish outlook for the global economy contrasted with the note of caution he struck a day earlier, when he warned Davos audiences that the next downturn had the potential to be “more violent” than expected. He also said Wednesday that Citigroup was more resilient than in the past, and had "terrific risk appetite" across its businesses and regions.
"This is the first synchronized growth we’ve seen in well over a decade," he said. "Who would have thought we’d see Europe growing like this a year ago?” Maybe not long in the future, Japan starts withdrawing monetary stimulus, he said. "These are really positive surprises."
