Citigroup Inc. plans to shed its red umbrella logo, but the well-known corporate symbol will not disappear from sight.
The $1.88 trillion New York company said Tuesday that it has agreed to sell the logo to St. Paul Travelers Cos. Inc., one of the successor companies to Travelers Group Inc., the insurance company that created the umbrella logo in 1870 and merged with Citicorp to form Citigroup in 1998.
Citi sold Travelers' property/casualty business to St. Paul Travelers in 2004 and Travelers' life insurance business to MetLife Inc. in 2005.
But Citi had retained the umbrella logo, which Sanford I. Weill, the company's former chairman, described in his 2006 book, "The Real Deal: My Life in Business and Philanthropy," as symbolic of an effort to create "an 'umbrella' of services that would cover all of our customers' needs."
However, Citigroup today is not the same company once presided over by Mr. Weill, who retired in April. In December 2005 it also divested its asset management arm and analysts have called for other divestitures.
"Our research consistently showed that the umbrella was still associated with insurance, specifically St. Paul Travelers," Charles O. Prince, Citi chairman and chief executive, said in an internal memo Tuesday. "It no longer reflected the company we are or the company we want to be."
Also Tuesday, as expected, Citi announced plans to attach the "Citi" brand in front of several business lines next quarter.
Business units that will add "Citi" to their name include Smith Barney, which would be known as Citi Smith Barney.
Banamex, Citi's Mexican retail banking unit, and Primerica, its North American insurance business, will not change their names.
Citi did not say how much it is spending on the branding change or how much St. Paul Travelers is paying for the logo.
St. Paul Travelers also said it would change its name to Travelers Cos. Inc. and change its ticker symbol to TRV once the rights for the umbrella are transferred in mid-March. The insurer's current logo is a red shield. The stock currently traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol STA.
Citi said its branding effort would not affect its official corporate name, which will remain Citigroup Inc.
Richard Bove, an analyst at Punk, Ziegel & Co., said getting rid of the umbrella makes sense for Citi — both practically and symbolically.
"From a conceptual standpoint, the umbrella meant, 'We sell every financial product,' and they don't do that anymore," he said.
