Bangladesh: The New Frontier for Banks article

An article was published in BusinessWeek (link at bottom of the post). It message was that banking is the last place in Asia for foreign banks to come in and gobble up. Its a New frontier at least for Mamun Rashid (for now). Citibank has done well through correspondence banking. But HSBC still is beating them by a large margin. Check out the diagram on the left. (tax rate is about 50%). [Chart shows highest 'taxpayers' with the picture of the NBR Chairman].

Citibank ups publicity in Bangladesh
They really have stepped it up a notch. First they hooked up with some local banks, namely Dutch-Bangla Bank (for their ATMs I suppose). Then they put up pointless ads in newspapers which just said 'Citibank' without any real message. Just telling everyone they are there. Then Mamun Rashid goes on to write articles in a relatively biased newspaper called 'The Daily Star'. But hey that newspaper is the most circulated one out there and he wants to get Citibank out.

But Mr. Mamun Rashid's writing isn't bad but neither is it moving nor inspiring. But he knows his banking so he is the head of Citibank in Bangladesh. Then Citibank have a lot of small and meaningless awards/donations that is geared towards getting the attention of head office/foreign press but does not move a leaf locally. Their Citibank Micro enterpreneurship Award is very much pointless, only manages to startle the foreign press who are already being entertained by Mohammad Yunus. Other than that Citibank and micro-entrepreneurs have nothing in common. If it were the case, Yunus would be hugging Mamun Rashid.

The Profits in the Asian Citis
Citibank gets record profits from Asia every year. And Bangladesh is no exception. But in reality Citibank wants to be HSBC. Hence the push for Bangladesh. Recently HSBC has made a string of investments in Asia. But Citibank has yet to make their move. Even though Mr. Mamun Rashid knows the way forward, Mr. Vikram Pandit is too busy sorting out the american losses to notice. But atleast HSBC is getting the drift.

Link to the BusinessWeek article
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jun2008/gb20080630_096327.htm?chan=globalbiz_asia+index+page_top+stories