CCitigroup, Inc.

Citigroup is the most international of the large US banks, and its current story is the simplification of an over-complex structure.

Its strength is global payments and servicing multinational corporations: the bank moves money across dozens of countries and holds client accounts there. That is durable fee income, largely independent of rates and hard for competitors to replicate.

Its historical weakness is retail banking outside the United States: many country operations with low returns and high management costs. The bank has been selling and closing them, shrinking to the markets where it makes sense. The progress of that reorganisation is what the market reads first.

An additional factor is regulatory orders on risk and data management: complying costs money and constrains distributions. The bank traded below book value for a long time, which for a large bank signals market scepticism about returns on capital. A dividend is paid.