Citigroup Sacks 11 Banamex Employees As More Details Of The $400 M Fraud Emerge

The Mexican loan calamity; wherein Citiigroup’s Mexican extension Banamex loaned $400 million to a company that could not pay them back, has thus far has been equal part expensive, embarrassing and generally damaging  for the company. The scandal has now  has claimed its next round of victims.

11 Banamex employees, including four high ranking executives, were fired in connection with the fraud currently under investigation by U.S. Department of Justice.

So far there had only been one firing in connection with the  $400 loan to politically connected but financially troubled oil services company Oceanografíat–a regional bank employee who allegedly falsified documents that helped the company get the loan.

The latest round of firings, included the head of corporate banking, the head institutional risk officer, the head of trade finance and the head of trade and treasury solutions. Some of the employees fired in the purge had been at Banamex for close to 20 years and had no direct involvement with the fraud. They found themselves on the chopping block for failing to detect the fraud.

And the firings aren’t over yet, according to Chief Executive Michael Corbat.

“Before our investigation concludes, we expect several other employees, both inside and outside Mexico, may receive forms of disciplinary action as well,” wrote Corbat in a memo to employees on Wednesday, reports The New York Times 

No Citigroup executives in the United States have gotten the sack yet, though many face pay cuts and other disciplinary action in relation to the fraud.

“What’s Hot” is aggregated content. PYMNTS.com claims no responsibility for the accuracy of the content published by the original source. 

 

 

Wayfair Deploys Google AI to Scale and Enrich Product Catalogs

Google, Wayfair, AI, retail, partnerships

Wayfair has reduced the time needed to curate product listings by 67%, saved hundreds of thousands of dollars and improved some conversion rates by 2% by deploying Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

The online retailer shared these results in a Sunday (Jan. 10) press release emailed to PYMNTS announcing that it is using Google’s Gemini models on Vertex AI to enhance its product catalog and unlock “the next generation of retail experiences.”

“With Google Cloud, we’ve been able to efficiently scale and enrich our product catalogs, enabling us to support a more seamless and engaging shopping experience for our customers,” Wayfair Chief Technology Officer Fiona Tan said in the release.

Gemini on Google Cloud improved Wayfair’s time-to-market by automatically categorizing products across its 30 million product portfolio, delivered cost savings by eliminating the need to manually tag attributes like color and style, and improved conversion rates by increasing the accuracy of product attributes and improving the coverage of attribute tags in the retailer’s catalog, according to the release.

The technology also automatically catches errors in product dimensions and flags inappropriate materials, per the release.

Wayfair is also using Gemini for Google Workspace to boost employees’ productivity, according to the release.

The retailer is using AI features in this suite of productivity apps to draft and respond to emails, summarize and proofread documents, build presentation templates and gain expertise in new areas, per the release.

“By harnessing the power of Gemini and Google Workspace, Wayfair is not only automating complex tasks and boosting employee collaboration, but also creating more personalized and engaging experiences for every shopper,” Matt Renner, president, global revenue at Google Cloud, said in the release.

The rise of large language models (LLMs) has thrust generative AI into the driver’s seat of retail technologies, prompting brands to reassess their strategies, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and AI-ID collaboration, “What Generative AI Has in Store for the Retail Industry.”

The report found that 92% of companies are using AI-driven personalization to drive growth and that 77% of business leaders rank generative AI as the most impactful emerging technology.