Citigroup to make 10,000 redundant

Citigroup is cutting at least 10,000 jobs in its investment bank and other divisions throughout the world, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Citigroup chief executive officer Vikram Pandit and his deputies have instructed managers to slash their budgets for employee compensation by at least 25 per cent, the paper said citing sources.

"We will continue to carefully manage our head count levels as we re-engineer the company in line with our stated goal and market realities," Citigroup spokesperson Christina Pretto told the paper.

Citigroup announced last month it cut 11,000 jobs in the third quarter, bringing the total number of job cuts in 2008 to 23,000.

Citigroup aims to shrink its workforce to about 290,000 employees by next year from 352,000 as of Sept 30, the WSJ said, citing another person.

The paper also reported that Citigroup is notifying some credit card customers that their interest rates are being raised by an average of three percentage points.

A person familiar with the strategy estimated that the rate increases would apply to less than 20 per cent of Citigroup's card portfolio, according to the paper.

A Citigroup spokesman told Reuters that she had nothing further to add to the company's comments reported by the Journal.

Citigroup Inc. (Citigroup) is a diversified global financial services holding company whose businesses provide a range of financial services to consumer and corporate customers.

Citigroup is a bank holding company. Since last March, Citigroup was organised into four major segments: Consumer Banking, Global Cards, Institutional Clients Group and Global Wealth Management.

Last March, Citigroup reorganised its consumer group into two global businesses: Consumer Banking and Global Cards. In May, the Company has reorganised its equity and debt business in Japan. Nikko Citigroup Ltd, the Company's Japan investment banking unit, merged its equity and debt underwriting teams into one.