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Citi Wins Best Use of IT in Wholesale and Investment Banking in Financial Sector Technology Awards

Global Citigroup trading documentation project recognized by leading industry publication

London, UK - 31 March, 2009

Thunderhead today announced that its project at Citigroup won recognition for "Best Use of IT in Wholesale and Investment Banking" at this year's Financial Sector Technology (FST) awards.

Citi deployed the Thunderhead NOW solution to automate the production of highly complex trade documentation in its Global Retail Structured Products business, which sells derivative instruments to institutional and retail investors.  The variety of features, underlying instruments, wrappers and other product terms that are combined to meet customers' specific requirements necessitates the generation of complex, deal-specific trade documentation, including term sheets and legal documents.

Previously, the term sheets were created by different teams across the business, with numerous edits to multiple versions of the same trade details.  This took up valuable front-office resources and also led to expensive drafting costs from the legal teams.  Increased volumes of smaller-sized deals and the resulting pressure on margins also meant that the existing process was hindering business growth and profitability for the company.

As a result, Citi recognized the need for a highly flexible, robust document generation system, and, following an extensive proof of concept, selected Thunderhead NOW as its preferred solution.  Initially, Thunderhead was rolled out to the business's London sales desk and then extended to sales desks across Europe, the Middle East and the United States in just 11 months, completing in December 2008.

“Citigroup is delighted that this important project has been given this well-deserved recognition,” commented Stefan Wagner, Managing Director, Global Head of e-Commerce for Retail Structured Products at Citi.  “Working with our partners at Thunderhead and within Citi-Tech has enabled us to provide our clients with a massive improvement in consistency and quality of our trade documentation.  We can now turn around in minutes what used to take weeks.  It also allows us to pass on significant savings in legal costs within our industry-leading products and solutions in the retail structured product space.”

The success of the project means that Citi will be extending the solution to all salespeople across the global structured products business and the New Issuance and Legal Issuance teams.

“On behalf of Thunderhead, I would like to congratulate Stefan and the team at Citi on winning this prestigious award,” said Thunderhead CEO, Glen Manchester.  “Citi's solution highlights the significant benefits financial institutions can achieve through automated trade document generation including reduced operational costs and risk, increased productivity and efficient business growth.”

About FST:
Financial Sector Technology (FST) is one of the leading business titles for IT decision makers in the UK and European financial services sector and the annual FST Awards aim to recognize excellence and innovation in the field of IT within the industry.