The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday said nine of the world’s biggest financial institutions may find it hard to thrive in the new global economy and deserve heightened attention from regulators.

In its latest report on global financial market stability, the IMF listed nine banks: Citigroup C, -1.47% , Société Générale GLE, -3.05% SCGLY, -2.95% , UniCredit Group UCG, -3.12% , Deutsche Bank DB, -1.62% DBK, -1.40% , Barclays BARC, -3.10% , Standard Chartered STAN, -3.54% , Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group 8316, +0.12% , Mizuho Financial Group MFG, -0.37% 8411, -0.21% and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group US:MTU 8306, -0.06% as banks that exhibit “both thin capital buffers relative to future regulatory requirements and relatively weak profitability to build those buffers over the next few years.”

The IMF said some of these banks continue to grapple with legacy issues. Others, mainly the European investment banks, “still face the problem of defining and executing profitable business models.”

Low domestic interest rates also affect the profitability of the troubled Japanese banks, the IMF said.

“Problems in even a single one of these global systemically important banks could generate systemic stress,” according to the IMF, so supervisors must focus on business model risks and sustainable profitability.

Citi, for example, was a poster child of the financial crisis, with the company forced to cleave off billions in businesses to comply with more stringent regulatory requirements in the wake of the mortgage-fueled, global banking implosion.

Jennifer Lowney, head of corporate communications at Citigroup, said the bank took issue with the IMF’s analysis.

“We don’t understand how they reach their conclusions and disagree with them. We laid out our return targets during our Investor Day in July and, as our third quarter results show, we are making steady progress in reaching them,” Lowney said, in a statement.

Citigroup’s earnings, released Thursday, were bouyed by gains in the firm’s consumer banks.

The firm’s stock jumped in early trading and was up as much as 1.6% before ending up down 0.6%.