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Citi Executive Gregg Morton Leads Global Banking Boot Camp

By Keith Morelli

TAMPA (April 20, 2017) -- As boot camps go, this one was pretty relaxed. There was no obstacle courses, no bellowing drill sergeants and no 10-mile runs in the rain with full gear.

But attendees – some engineering students, but mostly business students – were busy typing notes on laptops and scribbling on legal pads.

The Global Banking Course Student Spring Boot Camp included about 75 students who signed up for the event. If they attend all three sessions, students will receive a certificate of completion. They took up just about every seat in the Muma College of Business auditorium to hear representatives of Citi clue them in about global banking.

Gregg Morton, site president of the Tampa Citi Service Center, is the senior representative in the Tampa Bay area for the world's largest bank. He gave the opening remarks and introduction to the first day of the three-day – one hour a day – boot-camp session.

The global banking academic boot camps have two purposes. One is to let students know the roles and functions of a global bank, the other is to make contact with some of  the brightest minds coming out of college. It was partly a scouting trip for Morton.

"We are always recruiting," he said later, after turning the program over to other Citi managers. Sharp graduates/new hires raise the value of the business, he said.

"Even if they go to competitors," he said, "that's a win overall."

The presentation explained what exactly a global bank is, how it works in a world-wide economy for businesses that span the planet, like Google and Facebook. Morton said that while Citi is in competition with other financial institutions, such as Chase or Raymond James, they sometimes work together.

"On some fronts," he said, "they may be our client or we may be their client."

Citi survived the banking crisis almost 10 years ago, he said, "and I'm proud of that fact."

At the time, he said, no one offered much sympathy to banks of any kind.

"You'd be at a party and you didn't want to tell anybody you worked for a bank," he said. "I've been to those parties. Nobody liked big banks."

But as the crisis settled, he said, Citi emerged atop the heap.

He touched on the bank's departments, including investigations and security. There are live video streams from every Citi location around the world that can be seen in real time at the Citi headquarters in the Tampa Bay area, he said. Public affairs protects the brand name.

Want a job right out of college? Morton said the best shot may be in internal auditing, where experts in accounting always are needed.

"That's really a hot job market right now," he said.

Despite political leanings toward isolating the nation from outside influences, he said the global economy is here to stay.

"Global interconnections are not going away," he said. "Talk about 'this country first' and 'that country first,' that's only for short-term implications, but this is now a global economy."