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Citi's Focusing on the Markets It Can Win

By Jim Cramer

 About this article:
 Citigroup's making all the right moves. It knows it can't get critical mass in so many cities, so it is shrewdly cutting back on markets where it doesn't have share. How smart is that? I understand that Citigroup hasn't made the announcement yet -- only the press has -- but nobody breaks a story like this without some basis in fact. Not that long ago I met with the ING team when they decided to make America a priority. They had global ambitions, but they said that banking is a local affair. The reasons? Until you have scale, there's no reason to buy up local media, which is expensive if you only have a couple of stores. Vernon Hill, the founder of Commerce Bancorp, often said the same thing to me: Don't build out the branches unless you can dominate. Citigroup loses one more distraction...

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