Citigroup To Close All Massachusetts Branches
Citigroup Inc. will pull out of the Massachusetts retail banking market in January, closing its remaining 17 branches and taking with it the sponsorship of the Citi Performing Arts Center in Boston’s Theater District.
The New York financial giant said it will maintain its private banking office for wealthy customers and continue to serve institutional and commercial banking clients here.
But it will end its support of the nonprofit arts center — which operates the Citi Wang Theatre, the Citi Shubert Theatre, and, for a short while longer, the Colonial Theatre — when the naming rights contract comes up for renewal in November 2016.
“Do you know anybody who wants naming rights?’’ cracked Josiah A. Spaulding Jr., president and chief executive of Citi Performing Arts Center, in an interview with The Boston Globe Wednesday evening.
Spaulding said Citigroup has been “an incredible partner’’ but that the bank’s departure will not spell doom for the arts center. The bank’s financial support, while enough to warrant naming rights, amounted to less than 10 percent of Citi Performing Arts Center’s roughly $30 million budget, he said.
“We will be fine,’’ said Spaulding.
Perhaps the greatest impact of Citi’s departure will be on the customers of Citigroup’s 17 branches, which are primarily in the Boston area.
Citigroup burst into the Boston area nearly 10 years ago, hiring bank managers from local competitors, opening branches in prime locations, such as the Back Bay, Wellesley, and Cambridge, and inking a $34 million contract to put its name on the Wang Center for the Performing Arts. At its peak, Citigroup had more than 30 branches in the Boston area.
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