CITIGROUP’S IRISH-BASED business, Citi Ireland, is the largest foreign bank employer in the Republic by employee numbers. It has 2,085 staff in Dublin and Waterford. The majority of Citi’s Irish staff work in the IFSC, while 100 are based in Waterford.

Its Dublin service centre opened in 1996, providing operational and processing support for Citi’s global transaction services business. In September 2000, Primerica, part of Citi’s insurance business, opened CitiLife Financial Ltd, which provides life assurance products for the Spanish market.

In May 2001, a banking licence was issued in the name of Citibank Ireland Financial Services plc. This bank was renamed Citibank Europe plc. According to the company, the name-change reflected the level of regional and global business being managed by the company.

Citi set up a dedicated research and development centre in Ireland with Government support in 2005. It acquired the private wealth management group Quilter the following year.

In May 2007, it acquired the Bisys Group, which employed more than 600 in hedge fund administration. Citi announced a commitment of €35 million for research into the next generation of e-banking in July 2008.

Aidan Brady, head of Citibank in Ireland, warned last October the IFSC could face significant job losses due to consolidation in global banking, warning that costs in Ireland were “unsustainable” at a time of “massive cost reductions” in the industry.

Mr Brady is quoted on the IDA Ireland website as saying: “Irish people, with their high standard of education and excellent interpersonal skills, make particularly good bankers.”

In November 2008, Citigroup announced plans to reduce its global workforce by 14 per cent to 300,000. At that time a spokeswoman for Citibank in Ireland declined to comment on whether Irish staff would be among the 52,000 redundancies worldwide.

Citi and its predecessors have had a presence in Ireland since 1965.