Shareholders and board members have been pressuring Citigroup Inc. head Charles Prince to keep costs down, so Prince has a unique plan to oblige their demands. Cribbing from the playbooks of AT&T and Ford Motor Co., Prince plans a rebranding campaign that will strike the word "group" from its name along with the umbrella logo it inherited from the old Travelers Group in 1993. As part of the rebranding campaign, St. Paul Travelers Cos., the successor to the old Travelers Group, agreed to buy back the umbrella for an undisclosed sum. The Citi rebranding effort follows AT&T's recent move to rename its Cingular wireless service under the AT&T name, and Ford's plans to rename its ill-received Ford 500 and Mercury Mondeo mid-size sedans as the Taurus and Sable. With only four letters in the new Citi name, Prince will save money on new signage for the company's network of banks and ATMs. Of course, maybe that's not quite what the shareholders had in mind. —Matthew Wurtzel
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