Citigroup (NYSE: C) is taking moves to expand its consumer lending business as the U.S. economy slowly begins to recover.

The New York-based financial behemoth had originally planned to be scaling back its consumer lending business, specifically mortgages, but a Friday report from Bloomberg said that Citigroup was planning on reversing that stance by increasing its purchases of home mortgage and by keeping more loans on its balance sheet.

According to a statement made by Citigroup made on Friday, a company spokeswoman commented via email that Citigroup is “committed to growing our mortgage business with a focus on quality and long-term sustainability.”

Citibank has “reengineered quality controls to be best in class and are looking to grow the correspondent channel, in a controlled, deliberate manner, with high-quality lenders who provide superior quality loans,” the statement said. It continued, “This expansion is an important step to ensuring the foundation for future success is in place.”

The ailing megabank decided in January 2009 that mortgages were no longer part of its core business and had placed its CitiMortgage unit within its “Citi Holdings” entity, which are businesses that the company plans to sell or wind-down. Since then, Citigroup has still been originating mortgages through its “Citibank” retail banking franchise.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Sanjiv Das, head of Citigroup’s U.S. mortgage business, told Bloomberg that mortgages are a “core” part of Citigroup’s business along with other consumer banking products and that the company will continue to offer mortgages through Citicorp.

“In order to be full-service consumer bank we had to be able to offer mortgages to our customers,” Das said to Bloomberg. “Then, we said let’s now start to rebuild this business.”

This article (Citigroup Taking Moves to Expand Consumer Lending Business (NYSE: C)) was originally developed by and is property of American Banking News. Checkout American Banking News for up-to-date banking news and peer to peer lending news.

Citigroup (NYSE: C) maintained its Sell Rating on SunPower (NASDAQ:SPWRA) and lowered their price target on the company to $15.00, down from$18.00.

Analyst Timothy M Arcuri said, “While completion of the actg investigation removes overhang, SPWR increasingly reliant on systems business for profits (module margins look headed to 15-20% at best) esp. w/ the recent SunRay acq. Since systems carry a much lower multiple (~0.3x sales on European comps) and backing this out of SPWR’s valuation on 2011 revs, we est its module business trades at ~1.6 1.7x 2011 module revs. This is a significant prem to Chinese vendors trading largely at or below 1.0x 2011 revs. While SPWRA continues to get an efficiency and “based in US” premium, this seems unjustified given that gross margins for the Chinese players are as good or better than SPWR – and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Maintain Sell (3S), cut target to $15 on 15x 2011 GAAP EPS.”

Citigroup expects the company to report 2010 earnings per share of $1.16, versus a consensus estimate of $1.78

This article (Citigroup (NYSE: C) Maintains Sell Rating on SunPower (NADSAQ: SPWRA), Lowers Price Target) was originally developed by and is property of American Banking News. Checkout American Banking News for up-to-date banking news and peer to peer lending news.