Citigroup, Inc. (C) has sold off a part of its Diners Club credit card processing business to Elavon, a subsidiary of US Bancorp (USB), as it continues to rid itself of unwanted assets. Elavon acquired Citibank's Diners Club Card merchant-location portfolio in Western Europe, which represents more than 75,000 merchants. Small and mid-size businesses that accept Diners Club cards in the region will now process their transactions through Elavon. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Separately, Elavon has also signed an agreement with Diners Club International, a unit of Discover Financial Services (DFS). The agreement will enable Elavon to provide processing, funding and customer support services for merchants that accept Diners Club International cards in the U.K., Ireland, France, Switzerland and Germany. Citigroup, once the largest U.S. bank by assets, fell behind last year after a series of acquisitions by rivals. The ...

Citigroup, Inc. (C) plans to scale back its U.S. retail footprint to just six major metropolitan areas and limit lending mostly to wealthy customers. Citigroup, one of the biggest recipients of government bailout money, is looking to limit its overall consumer lending in the U.S. primarily to credit cards and "jumbo" mortgages, catering largely to well-heeled customers. The company’s executives are expected to present their plans to the board of directors in October to trim the retail branch network and concentrate mainly on the New York, Washington, D.C., Miami, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles areas. Citi has a global footprint with its branches located internationally. The company currently operates about 1,000 U.S. branches, significantly lower than the 5,000-plus run by Bank of America Corporation (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC) and JP Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM), which expanded its network with the ...

People’s Liberation, Inc., the designer of high-end casual apparel under the brand names William Rast™, J. Lindeberg™ and People’s Liberation™, announced today the acquisition and opening of its Los Angeles-based J. Lindeberg retail store in the Beverly Center in Los Angeles.

“With the acquisition of this Beverly Center location, we now have a corporately owned retail presence in both New York and Los Angeles for our J. Lindeberg brand,” stated Colin Dyne, CEO of People’s Liberation. “Our growth plans include expanding our retail footprint to optimize our margins and better control our brands.”

He continued, “This store’s high profile and its sales performance under the prior third-party license arrangement make it the logical West Coast counterpart of our flagship J. Lindeberg store in Manhattan’s SoHo district. The Beverly Center has been a magnet for Southern California fashion-seekers for decades.”

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Wednesday January 14, 2009 Navivest

JP Morgan Chase & Co (JPM) today announced that it will stop underwriting prime mortgages that are originated through third-party brokers and will instead start relying on its branch network to make home loans directly to creditworthy customers, this according to the Wall Street Journal.

Having acquired Washington Mutual, JP Morgan now has the retail footprint to be able to embark on this strategy.

While third-party brokers do provide a very cost effective way for a mortgage lender to expand, if more top tier banks adopt an in-house strategy, which is very possible in this environment, it could be very disastrous for the mortgage brokerage industry, which is already hard hit from the downturn in the housing market.

Then again, part of the reason for the sub-prime mess was mortgage brokers getting creative with mortgage applications, by encouraging their clients to lie on applications.

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