CFD strife marks Citi card index
Crumbs of business intelligence around the credit card and retail banking operations of Citi in Australia have emerged in a squabble over trade marks that ended up in court this week.GAIN Capital UK Limited prevailed over Citigroup in the Federal Court, with a ruling by Justice Brigitte Markovic.In 2010 Gain Capital UK Limited (formerly City Index Limited) applied for registration of two trade marks in Australia, one of them the CITYINDEX mark relevant to its contracts for difference equity derivatives business.IP Australia refused to register CITYINDEX and one other trade mark.Citi persuaded the trademarks registrar that registration of CITYINDEX should be refused because they were substantially identical with, or deceptively similar to, trademarks registered by Citigroup.GAIN will now secure a trade mark in line with that held in the UK because of the court's ruling.The judgment from Justice Markovic traverses a number of facets of Citi's Australian business, sharing a number of data points on the US bank's credit card segment in particular: the total revenue from Citi Australia's credit card business between 2006 and 2010 exceeded A$2.5 billion, and between 2010 and 2014, over 270,000 Citi Australia credit cards were issued in Australia; as at late 2010 Citi Australia was receiving more than 200,000 calls each month to its CITIPHONE contact centre; in 2010 the CITIBANK ONLINE system received over eight million daily unique visitors to the website; in 2010 the CITI MOBILE smartphone app, at that stage only designed for the Apple iPhone, was downloaded in Australia more than 14,500 times; and rewards expenditure was making up at least half the combined marketing and rewards expenditure, the aggregate for the latter in excess of $130 million in 2009, the latest year cited in the judgment.