Posts Tagged ‘citigroup’
By James Kwak This week’s Atlantic column is my somewhat belated response to Judge Jed Rakoff’s latest SEC takedown, this time rejecting a proposed settlement with Citigroup over a CDO-squared that the bank’s structuring desk created solely so that its trading desk could short it. I think Rakoff has identified the heart of the issue (the [...]
By Simon Johnson Vikram Pandit heads Citigroup, one of the world’s largest and most powerful banks. Writing in the Financial Times Thursday morning, with regard to the higher capital standards proposed by the Basel III process, he claims “There is a point beyond which more is not necessarily better. Hiking capital and liquidity requirements further [...]
By James Kwak I’ve already criticized Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit’s testimony before the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel on Thursday, but there’s one thing I left out. Citigroup, like other banks not named Goldman Sachs, is attempting to cloak itself in a mantle of goodness. Pandit’s testimony included several bullet points discussing all the wonderful things [...]
Testifying today before the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit took pains to strike the right notes. Near the beginning of his prepared testimony, he said, “First, however, I want to thank our Government for providing Citi with TARP funds. For Citi, as for many other institutions, this investment built a bridge over [...]
By Simon Johnson Today, perhaps following our earlier recommendation, Mr. Vikram Pandit – CEO of Citigroup – will appear before the congressional oversight panel for TARP. (Official website, with streamed hearing from 10am). This is an important opportunity because, if you want to expose the hubris, mismanagement, and executive incompetence – let’s face it – [...]
Or both? In late summer or early fall, Citibank was running a promotion: if you opened a new account or moved a certain amount of money to your bank account, you would get a $200 bonus within three months. Someone I know took advantage of this promotion, but as of Monday he still hadn’t gotten [...]
On the first day of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Phil Angelides demonstrated a gift for powerful and memorable metaphor: accusing Goldman Sachs of essentially selling defective cars and then taking out insurance on the buyers. Lloyd Blankfein and the other CEOs looked mildly uncomfortable, and this image reinforces the case for a tax on big [...]
On Monday, Citigroup received permission from its regulators to buy back the remaining $20 billion in preferred shares held by Treasury because of its investments under TARP. (Treasury invested $25 billion in October 2008 and another $20 billion November 2008; however, $25 billion worth of preferred shares were converted into common shares earlier this year, [...]
“Our distinctiveness is we connect the world better than anyone else. We have a great capability of building a business around that. And we are in the process of building a culture around that.” That’s Vikram Pandit on his company, Citigroup, as reported in The New York Times. What does it mean? Your guess is [...]
Yves Smith returned from book-writing land to catch up on the Andrew Hall story, which is one that I pretty much decided to ignore from the beginning. Hall is the Citigroup trader who, according to his compensation agreement, was due a $100 million bonus. The bonus was so big because Hall and his team were [...]
According to Bloomberg, Richard Parsons – the chair of Citigroup since February – now owns stock in the company worth, at yesterday’s close, about $350,000 (96,298 shares at $3.69). For such a well-established and highly remunerated corporate executive, we can reasonably refer to such an amount as “chump change.” In May, Forbes estimated Mr. Parsons’ net worth [...]
Washington-based policy tinkerers seem increasingly drawn to the idea that greater reliance on market information can forestall future problems – e.g., providing input into an early warning system that can be acted upon by a “macroprudential system regulator”. And while leading critics of the administration’s proposed approach to rating agencies make some good points, they also seem to [...]
It’s a beautiful day today, and after Goldman and JPMorgan, I don’t feel like diving deep into Citigroup’s earnings release. But judging from the Bloomberg article, it’s a similar story, just not as good. 1. All the good news was in fixed income trading: $4.7 billion in fixed income trading revenues; falling revenues in credit [...]
Since I’ve been writing about preferred and common stock so much this week, I thought I would just try to explain the arithmetic of the Citigroup deal announced today. (By the way, it isn’t a done deal: all it says is that Citi is offering a preferred-for-common conversion to its outside investors, and the government [...]
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Why Not Break-Up Citigroup?
November 17, 2011 in Commentary
Tags: citigroup, Richard Fisher, Vikram Pandit
By Simon Johnson Earlier this week, Richard Fisher – President of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank – captured the growing political mood with regard to very large banks: “I believe that too-big-to-fail banks are too-dangerous-to-permit.” Market-forces don’t work with the biggest banks at their current sizes; they have great political power and receive almost unlimited [...]