China: Citibank Launches Three New Structured Investment Accounts

Shanghai – Citibank announced today the launch of three new Structured Investment Accounts (“SIA”). They are a one-year, U.S. Dollar denominated SIA linked to a basket of global retailing stocks; a two-year, U.S. Dollar denominated SIA linked to global stock indices, and a one-year RMB denominated SIA linked to the Hang Seng Index.

The Structured Investment Account is an investment product designed to link to the performance of the underlying assets such as currencies, interest rates, equities, equity indices, commodities, bonds, and any other assets or basket of assets. The new products being launched are all principal protected, and offer customers a wide range of underlying equity markets as well as flexibility in choosing investment currency.

The one-year USD SIA is linked to five retail stocks in the U.S., Europe and Japan. They are Wal-Mart Stores, Inc (Bloomberg Code: WMT US); Lawson, Inc. (Bloomberg Code: 2651 JP); Seven & I Holdings Co., Ltd (Bloomberg Code: 3382 JP); Tesco PLX (Bloomberg Code: TSCO LN); FamilyMart Co., Ltd (Bloomberg Code: 8028 JP).

The RMB structured investment account is the first of its kind to be launched by a foreign bank in China, offering an RMB investment option to non-Chinese retail customers. “Traditionally there has been a lack of local currency investment products for foreign customers, and we expect this new offering to help fill a gap in the market, ” Anand Selva, Head of Retail Banking, Citigroup China said.