Boycott against Citibank

There is a thread in TRE titled ‘Singaporean should boycott Citibank’ by a blogger calling himself, Angry Singaporean Customer. He is unhappy with the knowledge that Citibank is one of the foreign banks that employed a predominant number of foreigners as staff of the bank. 40% of the banks staff is foreigners or it is more? Some banks regard PRs as locals and lump them together with Singaporeans. If this is the case, then the percentage of foreigners could be much bigger.

With the influx of foreigners into the little island and with many PMEs being replaced, and with foreigners and foreign banks found to practise discriminatory employment policies against Singaporeans, the anger is growing among the Singaporeans against foreigners and foreign institutions. Citibank has been quoted in many places as one of the biggest culprit in favouring the employment of foreigners.

In the thread concerned, the author is calling for Singaporeans to boycott Citibank and not to do business with the bank. Many bloggers have responded positively to the call and some claimed to have cut their credit cards from the cards and stop using them. Some have been urged to bring away their deposits or business elsewhere.

This is probably the second time in recent months that there were calls in social media to boycott foreign businesses. The first was against Jollybeans that was not much of a success. Would this call to boycott Citibank end with similar result that it was all noise and nothing much will happen?

How would Citibank head office in the US view this threat of unhappiness against Citibank here? If the anger grows and becomes widespread, it would definitely have some negative impact on Citibank and also affect the reputation of the bank as one that is anti Singaporeans or even a racist bank.

The thread just appeared today and still gathering responses from netizens that are unhappy with the situation created in the bank. Maybe it will just fizzle out in a couple of days, like all protests in this little sanitised island. A little noise is all there is to it.