The US banking group is the latest big lender to report Q3 figures.

Citigroup has reported a 2 per cent year-on-year rise in its private banking revenues for the third quarter of this year, reaching $867 million. The rise was driven by higher lending and deposit volumes, as well as higher investment activity, with both new and existing clients, partially offset by spread compression.

The US-listed lender gave few other results for its private banking operation in its statement earlier this week. Across the Citigroup empire as a whole, it logged a Q3 net income $4.9 billion, or $2.07 per diluted share, on revenues of $18.6 billion. This compared with net income of $4.6 billion, or $1.73 per diluted share, on revenues of $18.4 billion for the third quarter in 2018, it said.

Group revenues increased by 1 per cent from the prior-year period, including a gain on the sale (approximately $250 million) of an asset management business in Mexico in Global Consumer Banking in the third quarter of last year. When that gain is stripped out, revenues increased by 2 per cent. Group return on equity was 10.4 per cent. The bank had a Common Equity Tier 1 ratio – a standard international yardstick of a lender’s capital buffer – of 11.6 per cent.

“Despite an unpredictable environment throughout the quarter, we continue to deliver on our strategy of improving shareholder returns through consistent, client-led growth while also executing against our capital plan,” Michael Corbat, Citigroup chief executive, said. “Consistent with the commitment we made in 2017, we remain on track to return more than $60 billion of capital to our shareholders over a three-year period which ends next year. Buybacks have lowered our common shares outstanding by 259 million shares, or 11 per cent, in the last year alone.”