Citibank in the context of "Citigroup"

The United States occupation of Haiti began on July 28, 1915, when 330 U.S. Marines landed at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after the National City Bank of New York (now Citibank) convinced U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to take control of the country's political and financial interests. The occupation took place following years of socioeconomic instability within Haiti that culminated with the lynching of Haitian President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam by a mob angered by his executions of political prisoners.

During the occupation, Haiti had three new presidents while the United States ruled as a military regime through martial law, led by Marines and the U.S.-created Gendarmerie of Haiti. A corvée system of forced labor was used by the U.S. for infrastructure projects, resulting in hundreds to thousands of deaths. The occupation ended the constitutional ban on foreign ownership of land, which had existed since the foundation of Haiti.

The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA), also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, (Pub. L. 106–102 (text) (PDF), 113 Stat. 1338, enacted November 12, 1999) is an Act of the 106th United States Congress (1999–2001). It repealed part of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, removing barriers in the market among banking companies, securities companies, and insurance companies that prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company. With the passage of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms, and insurance companies were allowed to consolidate. Furthermore, it failed to give to the SEC or any other financial regulatory agency the authority to regulate large investment bank holding companies. The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

A year before the law was passed, Citicorp, a commercial bank holding company, merged with the insurance company Travelers Group in 1998 to form the conglomerate Citigroup, a corporation combining banking, securities and insurance services under a house of brands that included Citibank, Smith Barney, Primerica, and Travelers. Because this merger was a violation of the Glass–Steagall Act and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, the Federal Reserve gave Citigroup a temporary waiver in September 1998. Less than a year later, GLBA was passed to legalize these types of mergers on a permanent basis. The law also repealed Glass–Steagall's conflict of interest prohibitions "against simultaneous service by any officer, director, or employee of a securities firm as an officer, director, or employee of any member bank".

The Citigroup Center (formerly Citicorp Center and also known by its address, 601 Lexington Avenue) is an office skyscraper in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. Built in 1977 for Citibank, it is 915 feet (279 m) tall and has 1.3 million square feet (120,000 m) of office space across 59 floors. The building was designed by architect Hugh Stubbins, associate architect Emery Roth & Sons, and structural engineer William LeMessurier.

The Citigroup Center takes up much of a city block bounded clockwise from the west by Lexington Avenue, 54th Street, Third Avenue, and 53rd Street. Land acquisition took place from 1968 to 1973. One existing occupant, St. Peter's Lutheran Church, sold its plot on the condition that a new church building be constructed at the base of the tower. The design was announced in July 1973, and the structure was completed in October 1977. Less than a year after completion, the structure had to be strengthened when it was discovered that, due to a design flaw, the building was vulnerable to collapse in high winds. The building was acquired by Boston Properties in 2001, and Citicorp Center was renamed 601 Lexington Avenue in the 2000s. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Citigroup Center as a city landmark in 2016. The building's public spaces underwent renovations in 1995 and 2017.

The external debt of Haiti (French: Dette Extérieure d'Haïti) is a notable and controversial national debt which mostly stems from an outstanding 1825 compensation to former slavers of the French colonial empire and later 20th century corruptions.

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in Europe allowed rebel Haitian slaves to overpower French colonial rule and gain independence in the 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution. The restored French monarchy, supported by European monarchies, sent the 1825 French expedition to Haiti to demand, with military menace, massive compensations: Haiti had to repay the French government and former slaveholders $112 million French francs (more than $560 million in current U.S. dollars) for the loss of massively profitable slave-plantation assets and revenues. This price for independence was financed by French banks and the American Citibank, and finally paid off in 1947.