Citi’s EMEA emerging markets head brings focus to diverse economies

Atiq Rehman

Citi’s footprint across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) emerging markets covers almost 30 countries, split across three sub-clusters – Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and TRUK (Turkey, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan) – and currently accounts for about 10% of Citi’s global net profits.

This collection of economies brings with it a range of “different types of risk profiles, different-sized markets and challenges” says Atiq Rehman, head of Citi’s EMEA emerging markets cluster. But across these geographies there are also common themes and issues, and this is where Mr Rehman prefers to place his emphasis. 

“If you want to execute any business strategy, having focus is hugely important,” he says. “And while there are quite a lot of differences between these markets, there are also quite a lot of similarities as well in the issues and challenges faced.”

The bigger picture

Bringing strategic focus to how challenges and opportunities are identified and managed across Citi’s EMEA emerging markets businesses was one of the key drivers behind the formation of the cluster in September 2019, allowing the bank to more effectively address some of the common issues faced across different markets, such as dialogue with regulators, balance sheet levels and foreign currency matters. 

Mr Rehman believes this structure allows the bank to see the bigger picture and to identify synergies and common threads, rather than dealing with issues in isolation across many different markets, as well as allowing Citi to benefit from experts who can apply their knowledge across multiple countries. “Being organised in this way means you can have a conversation in totality, rather than dealing with individual situations here and there,” he says. “For example, we may have a situation in Nigeria with a particular product line, and it may be the case that we have a similar situation with that product line in Russia.”

Exciting challenges

Even though Mr Rehman has been working in emerging markets for a number of years, he still finds the sector interesting and stimulating on a daily basis. “You work with people from Africa, from Russia, from the Middle East, from Turkey. It’s just amazing stuff,” he says. “You’re dealing with so many different cultures and so many different languages, it’s tremendously exciting.” 

Citi’s EMEA emerging markets cluster has more than 3700 staff members working across its markets. Mr Rehman also still derives a lot of satisfaction from helping clients to move from local markets to making it big on the world stage. “You’re seeing emerging brands becoming global,” he says. “So, our ability to take them overseas and to help them raise money in the international markets is an exciting proposition because some of them are going through these things for the first time.”

Mr Rehman believes there remains a huge amount of untapped potential in emerging market economies. And although since the 1980s and 1990s there has been a greater recognition of the strategic opportunities they offer, there continues to be considerable growth capacity. 

“I think a lot of global companies have started to see the importance of the younger populations, the demographics and the future consumption patterns in emerging economies,” he says. “So, for more and more CEOs, emerging markets have started to feature as an important aspect of their strategic planning. Our job as an institution is to provide that connectivity into those markets, whether it’s for our investor clients or our corporate clients. I think there’s still an enormous amount of capacity.”

Truly global 

Being able to deal with one bank across multiple geographies is a major selling point that Mr Rehman believes Citi can offer its multinational clients. 

“We like to have clients that we serve in tens of different markets around the world,” he says. “We’re able to provide them with consistency of service and standardisation of documentation and things like that.” 

When deciding where to operate and where to prioritise resources, these decisions are made through the prism of how will this benefit Citi’s global client base, across four key client segments: financial institutions, multinationals, local large corporates and public sector institutions. “We need to consider what role each country plays in the delivery of products and services to global clients,” says Mr Rehman. “Each piece of our product offering and each piece of our country model is part of our comprehensive proposition. It is all built around the concept of delivering a deep network to our clients.”

Mr Rehman is proud of the breadth and depth of services Citi is able to offer its clients across many different emerging markets economies. For him, something which sets Citi apart is its ability to offer local banking solutions in emerging markets alongside its international banking service. “Unlike many global financial institutions, Citi operates with domestic operations in-market, so our ability to offer clients solutions in both local and foreign currency is a very unique capability,” he says. “Now, there are local banks in these markets, there are regional banks and there are some other large institutions. But Citi has a consistent approach across most of the emerging markets.

“When a client wants to start operating in a country they’ll call Citi, because we have that global relationship and we’re also able to provide local services. We’re able to provide domestic currency solutions, combined with our international product capabilities and global distribution.”

Remaining optimistic

When the cluster was created last year, Mr Rehman and the rest of the team put together a five-year plan. Although he believes changes will need to be made due the impact of Covid-19, something that will not be changing is the level of ambition. “I like to look at the glass half full,” he says. “[The global pandemic] is a very unusual event that none of us have experienced before, but at some point it will end and there will be a recovery.”

Mr Rehman is optimistic about Citi’s ability to weather the storm. “We have a very diversified business model. Diversified, in terms of countries, our product offerings and our client segments,” he says. He believes that its client relationships are a key strength. “We don’t do adventurous transactions or book new clients just because we want to do a single deal with them. [Instead], we have a relationship-oriented strategy.” 

Although there is a goal of increasing Citi’s client base, Mr Rehman is far more concerned with cultivating quality relationships for the long term. “We have a very clearly defined target market. We typically would not do opportunistic business,” he says. “We like to have medium- to long-term relationships with our clients. And we want to make sure that resources are being used in the most effective and efficient manner with proven client relationships. Part of our strategic initiative over five years, of course, would involve adding certain names over time, but that would very clearly need to be based on our target market.”

Having an existing network of strong client relationships during this period of disruption has been a real boon, as it has allowed much of Citi’s business activity to continue. Mr Rehman believes his team has been able to leverage existing trust to continue to serve its clients relatively smoothly. “It has been a great story for us to be able to serve clients through this period when they were changing their portfolios and selling assets, buying assets in the markets business and to be able to provide liquidity to them,” he says.

Aiding transformation

For him, one positive from the fallout of the pandemic is that it has focused the minds of many businesses on longer-term strategic issues, which may have been on the agenda before but now are becoming a higher priority, as companies plan how to remain viable and profitable in the post-Covid world. Mr Rehman gives the example of digital transformation, where he believes “clients are more receptive towards more automation than ever before”. Given the clear cost and efficiency benefits, he adds, “those institutions who are more digitally advanced in their operations are likely to benefit in this environment”. 

“The quicker you transform, the more secure your business and the clearer your prospects are going to be going forward,” he adds. “I think that’s going to be a positive for our business because we have a tremendous focus on helping firms to scale up their digital capabilities.”