Brazilian banking giant Itau-Unibanco isn't interested in buying a Citigroup (C) stake in Brazilian credit card networking company Redecard SA (RDCD3.BR), Itau-Unibanco President Roberto Setubal said Wednesday.

"We are already the holder of a controlling stake in Redecard," Setubal said at a news conference. "We are not interested in making Redecard into a subsidiary of the bank. We prefer to have other banks as our partners in Redecard. Redecard was designed to have a number of banks as partners."

Last week, Redecard SA confirmed that Citigroup Inc. is interesting in selling a portion of its stake in Redecard. Redecard, however, didn't unveil other details about Citigroup's interest in selling.

Redecard is jointly controlled by Banco Itau (ITU), Unibanco (UBB), and Citigroup. Currently, Itau and Unibanco each have a 23.21% stake in Redecard, while Citigroup has a 17% stake.

Setubal said, "We might at some point be interested in buying more shares in Redecard, but our only interest, in that case, would be to sell them later on."

In October of 2008, Itau and Unibanco announced a merger. The companies will unify their shares on March 31. The unified companies will constitute Brazil's largest bank.

-By Rogerio Jelmayer, Dow Jones Newswires; 5511-2847-4521; rogerio.jelmayer@dowjones.com