DgcityCitigroup chief executive Jane Fraser has laid out a bullish case for expansion in China, saying the bank’s newly approved securities licence completes its product offering and gives it an edge over foreign rivals at a moment when Wall Street firms are competing for a share of the country’s fast-growing wealth.
Fraser, speaking in Shanghai at Citi’s annual China conference, said the country represented one of the greatest strategic opportunities in financial services. The bank last month won approval from Chinese regulators to set up a wholly owned securities company, ending a wait of roughly five years. The venture will offer brokerage, underwriting, research and trading services, and is expected to begin operating within six months.
The licence makes Citi the seventh foreign firm allowed to run a fully owned brokerage on the Chinese mainland, putting it alongside rivals including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan. Approval came after Beijing promised, following the September summit between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, to process applications from foreign financial institutions more quickly.
The prize driving the renewed push is Chinese household wealth. Chinese residents with more than 125,000 dollars in investable assets hold roughly 27 trillion dollars combined, according to financial analytics firm Crisil Coalition Greenwich, and the number of millionaires has climbed to nearly four million from one million a decade ago. The property downturn, long a drag on sentiment, has also increased demand for diversification and financial advice, as families search for places to put money beyond apartments.
Citi, which has operated in China for more than a century and serves about 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies active in the country, plans to hire around 100 bankers over the next several years as it builds the securities business. Fraser said client activity had picked up across currency trading, cash management, trade finance, investment banking and wealth management.
The conference itself underscored the scale of interest, bringing together 1,500 global investors, policymakers and executives in Shanghai and Shenzhen. Other Western financial groups are pushing in through partnerships: Franklin Templeton and ChinaAMC recently signed a deal to co-develop funds, including exchange-traded products spanning Hong Kong, American and European structures.
The enthusiasm is not without risks. Chinese stocks have badly underperformed US markets this year, capital controls remain strict and state-linked funds play a dominant role in daily trading. Some foreign firms, including BlackRock with a China equity fund, have scaled back local ambitions after weak investor demand. Fraser acknowledged the market is highly regulated but argued the environment is far more open than it was a decade ago, and that the winners will be firms combining global networks with real local presence.
