The wealth division’s error was reported to regulators and, within Citigroup’s offices, provoked audible frustration from Andy Sieg, who had arrived just months earlier to run the unit, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing private information.
Citigroup Inc. almost shifted about US$6 billion ($8.08 billion) to a customer’s account by accident after a staffer handling the transfer copied and pasted the account number into a field for the dollar figure.
The near-miss in Citigroup’s wealth-management business magnified the intended amount by more than a thousand times and was detected on the next business day, according to people familiar with the matter. It happened in April, the same month that another part of the bank accidentally credited US$81 trillion to a different client.
