Citigroup Lost $7.77 billion in Fourth Quarter

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Taxpayers still own 7.7 billion Citigroup shares since the government bailed out the bank as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. So as a valued shareholder, you might be interested to know that Citigroup lost $7.77 billion in the fourth-quarter, or 33 cents per share. Citigroup says $6.2 billion of the loss was tied to a $20 billion fourth-quarter repayment on some $45 billion in government bailout money. (The bank also shed 100,000 jobs during the year.) "The environment continues to be challenging," said Chief financial officer John Gerspach in a statement worthy of the Understatement Hall of Fame.

Citi's big losses stand in stark contrast to JPMorgan Chase, which announced last week that profit more than quadrupled from a year earlier, to $3.28 billion, thanks in part to an improvement in investment- banking fees. Citi's move to repay the TARP money was in part motivated by a need to shake free from executive-pay restrictions. But chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit is very much "on the hot seat," as one analyst puts it; when he was named CEO in December 2007, Citi's share price was $34.77. This morning, at 9:43 a.m., it dropped to $3.33 on the New York Stock Exchange, Bloomberg reports; now it's around $3.50. Don't spend it all in one place!

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By John Del Signore in News on January 19, 2010 2:00 PM

Comments [rss]

Oxford

Not necessarily fair to skewer the Citi execs just yet. They're being paid to clean up a mess they didn't make. The vast majority of these bad loans are still hangovers from previous management. True, they are running out of time to blame their predecessors--if Citi hasn't moved on and found its stride by the end of the year, they should get the axe too.

Rocknrope

"The environment continues to be challenging,"

Not for GS or JP Morgan Chase. Citibank execs need to be skewered on a pike.

ed_Extinct

So these bonuses that they were slated to give... are they still giving them?

Politburo

So 80% of the loss was due to a repayment of a loan that wasn't due and was only done to avoid pay restrictions?

books

this #$%^& website lost my comment.

vikram over there made 38 MILLION dollars in 2008. 38 million while overshoring thousands of jobs overseas. John glad to see you corrected the blurb about why they paid back tarp. citibank should broken up.

banks, investment houses, etc should not all be under one roof. this is as it was for 70 years following the great crash. in the 90s they reversed this and we saw the merger madness and lo and behold it all went to hell again.

Ishtar

"The environment continues to be challenging," said Chief financial officer John Gerspach

Really? I would have never guessed with my stagnant pay and rising living expenses.

Chuck Schumer's Fat

They must have bought Chuck Schumer one too many meals during his campaign to support his high energy fight against terrorism. Have you ever counted the number of times Schumer says "terrorists" or "terrorism" in a week? It's like they are plotting to blow up his favorite deli. He already wasted more than a trillion dollars listening to Bush say that invading Iraq would do the trick. Meanwhile, Citibank, his big campaign contributor is terrorizing people out of their homes and not reducing struggling homeowners' interest rates while they get a sweetheart interest deal from the Fed's panic policies. It's harder and harder to distinguish CEO's from Senators these days in the US.