A tale of tellers in distant places. (Citibank's Japanese operation) (company profile)

Economist (US), The, July, 1990

Retail banking, says America's Citibank, is like the petrol-station business: you've got to have your pumps in all the right locations. In Japan, the best spots are hard to get

IF, LIKE Citibank, you aspire to being a global consumer bank, then you have to be able to pump wherever there are wealthy individuals. japan has those aplenty, while its retail banking remains relatively backward. Yet there are lots of hurdles for new, and particularly foreign, entrants. Japan has sky-high land prices. Setting up even a modest branch leaves no change from $50m. Buying a branch network is prohibitively expensive. Despite having fallen by 48% over the past four years relative to the Tokyo stockmarket, the share prices of Japanese banks still sell on price/earnings ratios...

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