Public Meeting Regarding Citicorp and Travelers Group
Thursday, June 25, 1998
Transcript of Panel Seven
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Public Meeting Regarding Citicorp and Travelers Group |
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2 A F T E R N O O N S E S S I O N
3 1:00 p.m.
4 MR. LONEY: I'd like to call the
5 meeting back to order. We're only a few
6 minutes late from what I originally planned.
7 We are going to start this afternoon's
8 proceedings with panel 7, John Shemo, Peter
9 Libassi, Kathleen Gordon, Ceasar Claro, Paul
10 Christie, and Carol Aranjo:
11 We'll start with Mr. Shemo.
12 MR. SHEMO: Good afternoon. My name
13 is John Shemo and I am here on behalf of
14 Connecticut Capital Region Growth Council which
15 is the leading economic development
16 organization for the 29 town Metro-Hartford
17 region.
18 I serve as the agency's executive
19 vice-president. I'm pleased to have this
20 opportunity to testify before you in favor of
21 Travelers Group proposal to acquire Citicorp.
22 There are two reasons that we as a Growth
23 Council support this merger. The first is job
24 preservation and growth. The second is
25 Travelers' long history of for being a good
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2 corporate citizen in your community. The
3 mission of the Growth Council is to boost the
4 local economy by fostering job growth in
5 Metro-Hartford.
6 It is our opinion that the Travelers
7 Citicorp merger would not only preserve the
8 thousands of jobs each company currently
9 provides in Metro-Hartford but also would
10 expand the local employment basis of the two
11 companies. Travelers has always been a key
12 employer of Metro-Hartford.
13 Before the companies earlier merger
14 with Primerica, about six thousand Travelers
15 jobs were lost and thousands more were at
16 serious risk. Since that merger, the company
17 has reversed its situation, returned to
18 profitability, and begun to grow its work force
19 again. Travelers Group now employs roughly
20 seven thousand people in Hartford, plus another
21 two thousand jobs were saved by Travelers
22 selling its health benefits operation to
23 another insurer. In effect, Travelers
24 practices of strategic acquisition and
25 restructuring has preserved nine thousand jobs
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2 for Metro-Hartford residents.
3 Separately, the Growth Council
4 recently completed successful negotiations to
5 bring the Citicorp in-bound call center to
6 Metro-Hartford. This customer service er
7 center will employ between 550 to 600 people.
8 We believe that the merger will have a positive
9 impact on this operation as well, as the two
10 companies began cross-selling their products
11 through telemarketing efforts.
12 The second reason that the Growth
13 Council supports this merger is as I said
14 because of Travelers strong track record in our
15 community. We believe that as a larger company
16 its ability to promote the region's economic
17 development will be enhanced.
18 Travelers was an original
19 incorporator of and investor in the Growth
20 Council, again, funding our efforts this year.
21 There are several other efforts of
22 Travelers community support. Travelers
23 currently provides the use of its education
24 center to the University of Connecticut as a
25 downtown campus. We view this as the first
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2 step in creating even a larger downtown
3 Hartford higher education center, involving
4 courses offered to many of the local
5 universities.
6 The higher education center is high
7 on our list of projects that would both draw
8 more people downtown and benefit the city's
9 current employers and workers. Riverfront
10 Recapture, which has revitalized recreational
11 activities on the Connecticut River also has
12 been a recipient of Travelers'generosity. To
13 date, the company has invested point one
14 million dollars in Riverfront programs, which
15 give new life to the region and attract both
16 residents and visitors to Hartford, East
17 Hartford and other towns along the river.
18 It is our opinion that the Travelers
19 Citicorp merger would serve the best interest
20 of the Metro-Hartford region. We urge you to
21 consider it favorably. Thank you.
22 MR. LONEY: Thank you, Mr. Shemo.
23 Maybe I should repeat what I said this morning
24 about the time sequence, because some of you
25 may not have been here and some of the next few
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2 panels may not have been here. The lady in the
3 middle in the front row here is going to be
4 holding up signs to tell you when you're down
5 to two minutes remaining, and then when time
6 has expired.
7 I will say that the folks this
8 morning blazed a trail that will be hard for
9 this afternoon's group to emulate. They stayed
10 very close to on time and I appreciate that,
11 and it helps us get in everybody's testimony
12 and I'd like to try to repeat this morning's
13 success, and I'm taking up too much time saying
14 that. Mr. Libassi.
15 MR. LIBASSI: My name is F. Peter
16 Libassi. I'm a Travelers retiree and I'm also
17 a Travelers shareholder.
18 I'm here today in my capacity as
19 president of the Childrens Fund of Connecticut
20 which is a grant making foundation and my
21 statement will deal with the leadership role
22 that Travelers played in the establishment of
23 that foundation, and the public benefits which
24 have flowed from it.
25 In 1992 the Newington Children's
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2 Hospital in Newington, Connecticut which was an
3 orthopedic hospital decided that due to a
4 reduction in patient load it would close and
5 reopen as a specialized childrens' hospital in
6 the City of Hartford.
7 In reviewing the health needs of the
8 children of Hartford, the Travelers thought
9 that perhaps they were very serious issues
10 related to childrens health, but they dealt
11 more with primary and preventive care. They
12 dealt with such issues as immunization, well
13 baby checkups, teen age pregnancy, prenatal
14 care, issues which were quite different than
15 those served by a high tech specialty hospital.
16 As a result, the Travelers in fact
17 questioned the wisdom of whether a high tech
18 hospital as proposed actually addressed the
19 health needs of children in Hartford. With
20 that question as its focus the Travelers
21 decided to initiate a study. The independent
22 study as to what were in fact the health needs
23 of children, and at first other corporations
24 were curious about the study, and eventually
25 actually joined with Travelers in sponsoring
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2 that study, which was done by Lewin/ICF. That
3 study concluded that there was in fact a need
4 for a childrens' hospital, but a much smaller
5 hospital than had been originally proposed, but
6 the study also concluded, as the Travelers had
7 argued, that the health needs of the children
8 of Hartford would only be served if a serious
9 campaign was launched that would focus on
10 primary and preventive care.
11 Now, as a result of that the
12 Childrens' Fund of Connecticut was established
13 with a leadership grant of one million dollars
14 from the Travelers foundation.
15 With that gift as a leadership gift
16 other corporations and other hospitals in the
17 area also contributed and the foundation was
18 established of $17 million to serve the under
19 served children in the City of Hartford and in
20 other you are been areas in Connecticut dealing
21 primarily with preventive and primary care.
22 The board of that foundation after
23 exhaustive study of the needs of children
24 throughout the state, concluded that it ought
25 to focus on developmental delays and
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2 developmental deficiencies, and how they might
3 be prevented.
4 That led to the decision that what
5 was needed most in the state was training for
6 those people who provide care for children. We
7 were surprised to learn of the extent to which
8 pediatric nurses, social workers, child care
9 providers, day care center people really had
10 very limited knowledge of primary and
11 preventive strategy with respect to those
12 deficiencies, and with that the Childrens Fund
13 sponsored the first state-wide training program
14 for child care providers in the State of
15 Connecticut.
16 This foundation brought together four
17 state agencies and three private organizations
18 all of which contributed $600,000 to the
19 training and $200,000 from the Childrens Fund
20 of Connecticut. So at this time in Connecticut
21 1600 family child care providers are in the
22 first training program that has ever been
23 offered in the State of Connecticut.
24 The result is that ten thousand
25 children in September will reap the benefits of
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2 being under the care of providers who are
3 receiving the very finest in child care
4 training. There is no question that the extent
5 of training of child care providers in the
6 State of Connecticut would not now be under way
7 if it had not been for the leadership and for
8 the foresight of the Travelers Corporation.
9 Thank you.
10
11 MR. LONEY: Thank you, Mr. Libassi.
12 I have next Ms. Gordon.
13 MS. GORDON: Yes. I'm Kathleen Gordon
14 and I'm president founder and board member of
15 Working Capital Florida which is a nonprofit
16 community lending organization. We provide
17 uncollateralized small loans under $5,000 for
18 low income people to be self-employed.
19 I'm here at my own expense, and I'm
20 also here to attend the micro-credit summit
21 conference of practitioners which begins
22 tomorrow. There are more than a thousand
23 people that have paid their own way to come to
24 New York with the commitment of reaching one
25 hundred million families with credit around the
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2 world for self-employment.
3 City Corporation was the first funder
4 of the micro-credit summit which took place
5 last February in New York City. More than
6 three thousand people came to the summit and
7 committed to reach one hundred million
8 families. We are presenting our action plan
9 tomorrow to each one of the organizations on
10 how we're going to reach those families with
11 credit.
12 The average loan outside the United
13 States is around $100 for self-employment and
14 we're targeting women. On the domestic side, I
15 will present tomorrow to the summit members on
16 how we in South Florida are going to expand and
17 reach ten thousand low income people in South
18 Florida with loans under $5,000 for
19 self-employment.
20 The chair of our board of directors
21 is Barbara Manning who is the vice-president of
22 Citibank in our community. She has provided
23 invaluable support and assistance, and also
24 helped with our loan portfolio for the work
25 that we're doing in our local community. We
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2 have started four hundred businesses in Dade
3 County in the last two and a half years. We
4 provide loans, technical assistance and
5 business training in 16 of the poorest
6 neighborhoods in Dade County. 65 percent of
7 our loans go to people of African descent. We
8 have an overall 96 percent repayment rate on
9 those loans.
10 Once we borrowed the money from a
11 consortium of ten banks of which Citibank is,
12 and Citicorp are one of the funders of our loan
13 portfolio. They have also provided operational
14 support for our organization to expand our
15 outreach into these low-income communities, and
16 the business training that we do provide.
17 They've also provided us again with the
18 leadership at the local level in expanding the
19 program.
20 Dade County, as you know, is a city
21 of primarily immigrants, and we are now
22 considered one of the six poorest cities in
23 America. So this type of lending where we
24 provide self-employment, even for welfare
25 mothers, has been critical in our community,
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2 and I'll tell you the truth, we could not have
3 done it without the support of Citibank and
4 City Corporation. They were one of the leaders
5 in coming for providing this kind of
6 assistance. So they are providing leadership
7 at the international level, the global level
8 and also at the local level which is extremely
9 powerful.
10 I don't know about the merger. I am
11 impressed with the 115 billion dollar
12 commitment for community development in this
13 country, and I do feel as a regulatory board
14 that we can, that you have a responsibility for
15 oversight that that money really gets targeted
16 down to these low-income communities, because
17 we're growing the businesses, and once the
18 businesses get up to the $5,000 loan site with
19 us, the participating banks put in a matching
20 loan.
21 So we help people develop a credit
22 history. They get a Dun & Bradstreet number
23 with us. We also have access development
24 accounts. Each one of the businesses to get a
25 loan also has to have a savings account, a
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2 group savings account. So we are promoting
3 asset development and business loans. They get
4 a credit history, and then they move up to bank
5 loans. We have ten banks that are
6 participating with us, and Citibank is one of
7 those.
8 We are excited about micro lending.
9 We feel that it's a program that should be
10 expanded all across the United States. Working
11 Capital is now working in seven states. We
12 started more than three thousand businesses.
13 So our program is the largest nonprofit micro
14 lending program in America to date, and we hope
15 to expand it all across the country. Thank you
16 so much.
17 MR. LONEY: Thank you. Mr. Claro.
18 MR. CLARO: good afternoon. My name
19 is Ceasar Claro and I am a director of the
20 Staten Island Economic Development Corporation,
21 the borough-wide business development agency
22 for Staten Island.
23 I am submitting testimony today on
24 behalf of the board of directors of the Staten
25 Island DC in support of the proposed Citicorp
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2 Travelers Group merger.
3 For the past four years Citibank has
4 a major support of the SIDC contributing in
5 exceeds of over sixty thousand dollars to the
6 organization as well as providing free
7 technical marketing and legal assistance. They
8 have provided much needed counsel on small
9 business development issues, and on many
10 occasions have guided our staff in implementing
11 new programs.
12 In addition, Citibank frequently
13 offers free capacity building courses to
14 not-for-profit organizations throughout the
15 city. All in all, they have been a great
16 corporate citizen to the people in small
17 business community of Staten Island.
18 As one who has worked in urban
19 economic and community development for over
20 eight years, and in two New York City counties,
21 I can honestly say that Citibank has been at
22 the forefront of urban revitalization. They
23 have devoted countless manpower hours and
24 financial support to underserved neighborhoods
25 and vital community organizations.
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2 In the outer boroughs of New York
3 City Citibank's name has become synonymous with
4 community development. They have been one of
5 the leading small business banking institutions
6 developing model programs to assist start up
7 firms, and womens-minority-owned businesses.
8 Unlike recent bank mergers, the
9 proposed Citibank Travelers merger involves
10 only one current philanthropic community
11 development corporation, in this case,
12 Citibank, thus preventing a negative impact on
13 the financial support organizations currently
14 receive.
15 Once again SIDC wholeheartedly
16 supports the merger and hopes this board does
17 as well.
18 Thank you for your time.
19 MR. LONEY: Thank you.
20 Mr. Christie.
21 MR. CHRISTIE: Members of the Federal
22 Reserve Board panel, my name is Paul Christie.
23 I'm executive director of Center City Churches
24 Incorporated.
25 Center City Churches is a
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2 not-for-profit nonsectarian human services
3 agency in Hartford, Connecticut.
4 It started in 1967. We are now
5 comprised of 12 congregations representing ten
6 religious traditions. Our mission is to be a
7 partnership of congregations, institutions and
8 individuals which cares for the city by finding
9 innovative and effective ways to help
10 Hartford's neediest residents work towards
11 self-sufficiency.
12 Since our beginning we have relied on
13 active partnerships to fulfill our mission.
14 Today with the help of over four hundred
15 volunteers annually dozens of corporate
16 foundations, public and private commitments, we
17 operate six programs. Among them Peters
18 Retreat is the first and largest AIDS housing
19 program in Connecticut, Laurel Street, the only
20 state licensed group home for the chronically
21 mentally ill in Hartford, Center for Hope,
22 offspring of the first soup kitchen in the
23 city, and Center for Youth, the most
24 comprehensive school tutoring and enrichment
25 program in Hartford serving over four hundred
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2 children weekly.
3 The Travelers Group Incorporated
4 plays a pivotal role in helping us fulfill our
5 mission. Here are some of the ways Travelers
6 puts energy into being community partner with
7 Center City Churches. Travelers is providing a
8 three-year grant for the Center for Youth which
9 enables us to double the number of children we
10 serve by adding a second school to our program.
11 Travelers purchased a van so we can
12 transport our program participants safely.
13 Travelers donates staff time to find office
14 space for our agency and secures furnishings
15 for that space. It provides consultations to
16 revise our personnel policies, and upgrade our
17 pension plan, while excluding themselves from
18 being considered as a vendor.
19 Travelers recruits board members and
20 school tutors. This spring Travelers developed
21 an ongoing art gallery in their offices to
22 display our students work, and that of their
23 employees and other community groups, thus
24 building bridges between the neighborhoods and
25 the board room.
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2 Already Travelers personnel have
3 purchased some of the students' work and
4 underwritten an artist residency see in the
5 school.
6 My daughter's crew experience in
7 college illustrate what I'm trying to say about
8 college as a community partner. Every seat in
9 crew has a name and a task. The "stroke" is
10 the team member who sets the pace for the boat.
11 By example all the other rowers align
12 themselves with him or her. The stroke sets
13 the standard.
14 In Center City Church's experience
15 Travelers is the corporate stroke for community
16 involvement in Hartford.
17 MR. LONEY: Thank you very much.
18 Ms. Aranjo.
19 MS. ARANJO: Good afternoon. My name
20 is Carol Aranjo and I am chair of the board of
21 the National Federation of Community
22 Development Credit Unions.
23 The National Federation of Community
24 Development Credit Unions represents 170 credit
25 unions that specialize in serving low income
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2 and minority communities in forty states.
3 Our members are located both in urban
4 and rural areas. Many of our members' credit
5 unions have served their community for some
6 fifty years. Our credit unions serve people in
7 communities who have often been ignored or
8 neglected, or are unable to be served by banks.
9 For the most part the members of CDCU
10 have small needs and need small loans.
11 Sometimes they have credit histories that would
12 make them unacceptable to banks. Serving this
13 market is not very profitable, which is why
14 many banks have retreated from our communities.
15 Our communities' development of
16 credit unions have decades of experience in
17 trying to fill the banking gaps and bringing
18 services to the unserved. It's not an easy
19 job. It can take many years and enormous
20 sacrifices for community development credit
21 unions to achieve the level of assets and
22 capital they need to serve their members
23 adequately.
24 Often our credit unions need help
25 getting to those levels. Citibank has provided
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2 that kind of help to the CDC movement. It has
3 not always been easy to convince banks, and
4 especially in today's climate where there seem
5 to be some real adversarial relationship
6 between some banks and credit unions to help
7 institutions that some bankers may call
8 competitors. But Citibank looked beyond this
9 to the needs of low income communities. They
10 decided if their bank presence wasn't
11 sufficient in a community it would be important
12 for low-income people to have access to a
13 nonprofit finance institution owned by the
14 community itself.
15 Listening to all the testimony today,
16 as a person of color I would like to say that
17 too often people of color are brought up when
18 these type of issues come before you, and often
19 groups say what they are doing to serve the
20 people of color, and I'm talking about
21 intermediaries and advocates, but I would ask
22 the Federal Reserve to be very careful about
23 the rainbow effect which I call, a pot of gold
24 at the end, the banks on one end and the
25 financial institutions and the adversaries and
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2 intermediaries on the other. Both have the pot
3 of gold.
4 The community is under need watching
5 the funds go from one end to the other and
6 they're not getting it. Statistics prove that
7 communities of color are in worse shape today
8 than they were twenty years ago. Something is
9 wrong.
10 I would like to say that Citibank I
11 commend them for understanding what a
12 conglomerate can do and what it cannot. In not
13 being able to do it, they are willing to
14 support those who can do it.
15 The micro fund, the community
16 development credit unions, the loan funds, the
17 community CDC, they are in the community run by
18 the people of the community making the
19 decisions to lift themselves up. People have
20 been trying to do it for them for twenty years.
21 It has not worked. They need to be able to do
22 it for themselves.
23 When institutions such as Citibank
24 recognize this, and are willing to support
25 those organizations that are in the community
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2 working to empower themselves and lift
3 themselves up, then I support this type of
4 bank.
5 So I would say that from the CDCU
6 movement, and I would also like to say someone
7 mentioned identifying the CDCU received money
8 from Citibank. The Federation received a
9 million dollars from Citibank to deposit into
10 low income credit unions to help them have the
11 equity they needed to continue lending to poor
12 people in the communities throughout the United
13 States. And I would say to those groups who
14 said this, I would ask that they identify
15 themselves if they plan to be recipients of any
16 monetary requirement, that the Federal Reserve
17 would put on a merger of this type. Oft times
18 they are complaining about the people who have
19 already received the money, but they plan to be
20 on the recipient side if the monetary
21 requirement is necessary.
22 I would also ask that you approve the
23 merger, but that you also keep an eye on any
24 monetary requirements, that you make sure that
25 you follow the dollars to make sure that they
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2 actually get to the communities that are being
3 represented as being underrepresented and
4 needing your concern.
5 Thank you.
6 MR. LONEY: Thank you.
7 Are there any questions from the
8 panel?
9 MR. ALVAREZ: I don't have any
10 questions, but I have a comment that pertains
11 to what some of the other speakers on the panel
12 before have represented people who have done
13 incredible work in the community like
14 yourselves and we appreciate you all taking the
15 time to come and talk to us. So no matter what
16 happens in this merger, good luck in continuing
17 the work you're doing.
18 MR. LONEY: I've been remiss in not
19 worrying about this before. I guess I was
20 thinking that everybody has been here all day.
21 Maybe they have.
22 So let me just repeat, if you have
23 written materials that represent your remarks
24 we would like to have copies if we could get
25 one before you leave. Also, if any of you who
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2 testified wish to supplement your oral
3 testimony you may do so by close of business 5
4 p.m. on July 2, by sending in such supplemental
5 information care of Jennifer Johnson, secretary
6 of the Board of Governors of the Federal
7 Reserve in Washington, D.C. 20551. Also, you
8 can fax it to 202-452-3462. So if you have
9 supplemental information we'd like to have it
10 by the end of business July 7th.
11 Also, I'll let you know that there
12 will be transcripts available by June 30th of
13 today's part of the meeting, and by July 1st
14 for tomorrow's part of the meeting that can be
15 obtained through the Federal Reserve Bank of
16 New York, and the transcript will be available
17 by close of business June 29th for today's part
18 of the meeting and June 30th for tomorrow's
19 meeting. The board's public website www.frb.
20 fed.us.
21 (Laughter)
22 So I would be remiss in not saying
23 this to the afternoon session as well as to the
24 morning session. Thank you very much.
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