Citibank 2011 Annual Report Download - page 4

2
One team, with one goal: serving our clients and stakeholders
Common Purpose
Conquering
distance and
the seasons
CARGO CONTAINER
GENERATIONS FORGET that fruits and vegetables have natural growing
seasons. In the Northern Hemisphere, people give Valentine’s Day roses
in February without a thought. This was not true, though, before it became
possible to efficiently transport large amounts of cargo across land and sea.
Malcolm McLean, a trucking entrepreneur, saw a ship as just another piece
of highway for transporting goods and envisioned installing racks to anchor
truck trailers on cargo ships. Citi teamed up with him to finance the project,
which ultimately led to the invention of the cargo container and thus
inter-modal transportation.
Bringing the
Atlantic and
Pacific 13,000
kilometers
closer
PANAMA CANAL
TAXI DRIVERS IN SHANGHAI prefer German Volkswagens, teenagers in
London love phones made in Taiwan and Parisian restaurateurs like to serve
Ecuadorian shrimp. We owe the routine nature of these choices to one of the
greatest engineering feats in human history: the Panama Canal. Thirty million
cubic meters of earth were removed to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans,
saving 15,000 ships a year from having to round the tip of South America.
Thanks to the world’s biggest shortcut, trade flourished, economies expanded,
and new markets and jobs emerged. At the request of President Theodore
Roosevelt, Citi played a central part in financing the construction of the canal.
Making a
scarce
resource
available
worldwide
SUPERTANKER
WE DEPEND ON OIL to heat our homes in winter, power our cars on the way
to work and lift passenger jets to destinations everywhere. Nearly half of the
oil supply is produced in just five countries, but it’s used in every corner of
the world. Much of it is transported in supertankers, championed by Aristotle
Onassis. These ships created unprecedented links between oil suppliers and
purchasers, bringing comfort and simplicity to everyday lives while changing
industries and making new markets. Citi financed the construction of Onassis’
first supertanker in 1948.
Charting
the path
to instant
communication
TRANS-ATLANTIC
CABLE
IT TAKES MILLISECONDS for a businessman in London to call his family
members in New York to let them know that he has arrived safely. In 1865, it
would have taken a ship nearly three weeks to deliver the message. All that
changed a year later, with the laying of the trans-Atlantic cable. For $10 a word,
messages could be transmitted between continents within minutes. What
once required an ocean crossing now took a few keystrokes. The cable was the
brainchild of Frederick Gisborne and Cyrus Field, who founded the New York,
Newfoundland and London Electric Telegraph Company. Citi played a role in its
financing, with Citi’s president serving as treasurer and director of the company.