Much was made of Citibank’s entry into the Boston market in 2006. The bank splashily, and expensively, attached its name to the Wang Center which became the Wang Theater at the Citi Performing Arts Center. Citi opened its first branches in 2007 and soon had 30 in the greater Boston region.

And it had a strategy as well. We will “follow our Smith Barney customers” in Boston. So, the bank established branches in over-banked communities like North Andover (seven branches), Newton (over twenty), Wellesley (seventeen), Needham (ten), Lexington (sixteen) and Brookline (eighteen) eschewing comparatively under-served working class locations such as Dorchester, Roxbury, Brockton and Lawrence. By 2012, Citigroup had sold Smith Barney to Morgan Stanley taking a $2.9 billion write-down in the process.

Citi also never seemed to understand the Massachusetts market. The bank did not offer first-time mortgage programs through either MassHousing or the Massachusetts Housing Partnership. Instead, Citi made feeble attempts to offer “HomeRun”, a promising portfolio mortgage product that could not be used to purchase triple-deckers that populate many urban neighborhoods here.

What lessons have been learned for mega-banks trying to make it in Boston? Don’t come if you are not ready to embrace the local market – the whole market, leafy suburbs and city streets. Don’t invite fair lending scrutiny by refusing to lend on a large part of our housing stock. Naming rights only get you so far. The hard work is building relationships one customer at a time and Citi was unable to make that work.