Citi is allowing its Saudi Arabia-based employees to work from home amid an uptick in regional conflict, CFO Gonzalo Luchetti told reporters Tuesday.
“Unfortunately, this is not the first disruptive event, and one that has a lot of impact on human life, across the region … [and] the safety of our employees and the families of our employees have always been our top priority,” Luchetti said during a media call, days after a series of missile and drone strikes on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. “We've already taken measures to make sure that we support their well-being.”
Saudi Arabia-based employees can “do what they feel comfortable doing” and be close to their families, Luchetti said, and the bank is also able to provide “additional shelter and so on.”
New York-based Citi reported third-quarter earnings Tuesday, including its best Q3 revenue in a decade, of $23.8 billion. Revenues increased 8% year-over-year, driven by growth in services, wealth, markets and banking.
Citi opened its Middle East regional headquarters in Riyadh last year. The bank entered Saudi Arabia 70 years earlier, but the 2004 sale of its stake in Samba Financial Group left it without a presence in the country for more than a decade.
It re-entered Saudi Arabia in 2018.
“The Middle East is one of the most dynamic regions in the world, and Saudi Arabia sits at the heart of that transformation,” CEO Jane Fraser said last year. “Establishing a regional headquarters here in Riyadh reflects both our confidence in the Kingdom’s momentum and our commitment to being close to the clients driving that change.”
Luchetti said Tuesday that Citi has contingency and resilience plans in place that allow the bank to continue to serve its clients amid times of conflict, and that those plans are working as planned.
“On a broader lens, I think our regional presence there … it's decades long. We have strong confidence, and we've seen [the] resilience of the region and the regional economies there,” Luchetti said. “Of course, we manage our exposures there, which are not substantial when you look at our disclosures, and generally feel good about the ability of the region, our clients, our employees, and our firm to navigate the disruption.”
In March, Citi temporarily closed offices in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, sending employees home to work, due to safety concerns amid regional conflict connected to the ongoing war in Iran. Rumors that the bank would be leaving the region entirely were untrue, Citi said.
Citi was one of several banks that permitted its Israel-based employees to work from home following the October 2024 attack by Hamas, Reuters reported, and Ukraine-based workers were allowed to relocate and work flexibly following the 2022 Russian invasion, The Wall Street Journal reported.
