Charles Prince Consumer Quotations

Our U.S. consumer franchise continues to face a challenging interest rate and pricing environment. I feel very good about how we're expanding internationally.

We have the opportunity to grow the consumer business dramatically.

We are seeing the benefits from our investment spending, which helped generate record revenues in our international businesses and record revenues globally in our corporate and investment banking business. Strength in these franchises more than offset weaker results in our U.S. consumer business.

We had terrific results, yet we're not firing on all cylinders. The one we're not firing on is our consumer business, which we saw good customer interaction and lower credit costs, but we also saw revenue growth was not where we hoped it would be.

Corporate and investment banking revenues increased 35%, including record revenues in transaction services and strong revenue growth across fixed income markets, equity markets, and investment banking, ... In Smith Barney, revenues grew 13%. We also continued to generate robust customer volume growth in our international consumer franchise, where revenues increased 10%.

I'm very, very pleased with our accomplishments and our financial performance. While I don't expect a quick turn in the U.S. consumer business, I do expect better results in the future.

I am very pleased with our first quarter accomplishments, which included strong growth in client activity across many franchises. We are seeing the benefits from our investment spending, which helped generate record revenues in our international businesses and record revenues globally in our corporate and investment banking business. Strength in these franchises more than offset weaker results in our U.S. consumer business.