CitiGroup Ties In Former Vice Chairman McQuade to Its Board

Wall Street is expecting higher profit for Citigroup when the company reports its second quarter results on Thursday.

Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) has announced that former chief executive of one of its Citibank unit, Eugene M. McQuade, has officially joined the board. Mr. McQuade served as vice chairman Citigroup for over a year before retiring from the bank around May, this year. Simultaneously, he joined XL Group, insurance and reinsurance company, as chairman.

In 2014, McQuade was persuaded by Citigroup CEO, Michael Corbat, to stay and delay his retirement to help the largest investment banking financial institution in the world in the deal with the bank’s effort to sail past the Federal Reserve’s annual stress test. The bank cleared that test in March this year, giving it the green signal to increase its dividends for the first time after the financial meltdown.

In explaining his decision to rope Eugene, Mr. Corbat describes, “Gene brings a wealth of expertise from his deep experience in banking, but at the same time also offers continuity of knowledge in the capital planning process.” The appointment has increased the number of members of Citigroup’s board from 13 to 14.

Meanwhile, Citigroup is due to announce its second quarter results tomorrow, Thursday, July 16^th 2015. The consensus estimate for profit is clocked in at $1.35, which is a rise of $1.24 over a year ago. It is also an upgrade from three months ago, when the estimate was pegged at $1.33.

On the other hand, analysts expect earnings to clock in at $5.44 per share for this fiscal year. They also expect revenues to slide around 17%, from less than $23 billion last year to over $19 billion in the second quarter this year. For the year, revenue is expected to clock in less than $77 billion.

The profit increase comes after the previous quarter’s decline in net-income. The profit increase in the most recent quarter climbed the figure up to less than $4.80 billion, which is a whopping 2535% increase.

Citigroup Stock price ended the day at $55.92, a gain of less the 0.70% the previous day, as the financial entity has sold out its retail and business commercial operations in Latin America, with Canadian based Bank of Nova Scotia (otherwise known as Scotiabank) acquiring those operations in Costa Rica and Panama. This will help to ripple the customer base to an estimated 387,000 customers of its existing business in both nations, as well as 15% market share in Costa Rica and 18% market share in credit card operations in Panama.