Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), the beleaguered financial giant with a completely ineffective CEO at the helm, will report quarterly earnings (or losses) tomorrow. Most likely, we will see yet another company taking steep losses due to bets on mortgage-backed securities and other goofy investments. When Citigroup kicked former CEO Chuck Prince out the door, his replacement was even more strange. Citigroup is floundering to this day, although I have no doubt the banking and investment giant will recover.

Citigroup's shares are currently at the lowest level since the company was formed a decade ago. It announced the sale of its German banking business for $7.7 billion just last week, and now analysts polled by Zacks are expecting a net loss of $0.42 per share when the finance behemoth announces quarterly results this Friday. Reuters estimates that losses could go as high as $0.60 per share. Regardless of the loss, either would be quite a drop -- over 134% to be exact -- from the company's year-ago EPS figure of $1.24.

What will Citigroup do? Well, it will continue digging itself out of the hole it's responsible for, just like every other finance company that bet the shaky farm on every Tom, Dick and Harry getting a $600,000 mortgage with a $50,000 annual income. In addition to selling off some assets in Germany, Citigroup is shedding some Japanese assets as well as saying it may be two or three years before its returns come back to favorable levels.

Do you own Citigroup shares? If so, are you holding on for the long run or have you sold them already?

Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) announced yesterday that it had elected Chuck Prince to its board of directors.

Yes, that Chuck Prince: the one who presided over a rapid decline in Citigroup Inc (NYSE: C)'s financial position and was forced to step down in November -- with $94 million in stock, a $1.74 million pension, and other assorted goodies. Then he was hauled before Congress to explain himself.

Why exactly would you want this guy on your board of directors? If you're a shareholder, I can't even imagine. But if you're the CEO, he'd be a great "watchdog." And the company's CEO, Anne Mulcahy, is also the chairman of the board. In the press release announcing his appointment, she said that "Chuck is a visionary leader whose unique talent and exceptional business experience will be a tremendous asset to our board."

Visionary? I'm actually inclined to agree. To lead the destruction of value at America's largest financial institution and then leave with 9-figures requires tremendous vision. If I were a Xerox shareholder, I'd be insulted.

MAJOR PAPERS:

• In what may trump a GBP1.6B bid from a private-equity led consortium consisting of The Goldman Sachs Group Inc's (NYSE: GS) Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Candover Investment (OTC: CDRIF), and Alpinvest, Expro International Group (OTC: EXPRF) said it received a GBP1.71B bid proposal from Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL), the Wall Street Journal reported. Expro said the proposal "does not amount to a firm intention to make an offer and is subject to certain preconditions."
• The Wall Street Journal also reported that the oil industry and some U.S. lawmakers are looking to end long-standing bans on domestic drilling put in place to protect areas that are environmentally-sensitive, fueled by concerns about global energy.
• In an interview with the Financial Times, Citigroup Incorporated's (NYSE: C) former chairman and CEO Sandy Weill acknowledged that choosing Chuck Prince as his successor in 2003 turned out not to be the "right thing" for the company and was flawed. Instead of handing the job to Prince, Weill said the board should have fostered competition among the bank's top managers for the job.

OTHER PAPERS:

• According to the Washington Post, MedImmune, a unit of drug giant AstraZeneca Plc (NYSE: AZN),settled with Genentech Inc (NYSE: DNA) a lawsuit over a patented component of its best-selling drug Synagis, which is aimed at preventing respiratory infections in infants. No details of the settlement were provided.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says AIG's Sullivan joins the "formers" at Citi and Marsh & McLennan as Eliot Spitzer's appointee failures.

Three strikes, and Spitzer's guys should all be out.

That's my thoughts about this Martin Sullivan/AIG (NYSE: AIG) (Cramer's Take) scandal. Remember that Sullivan was basically appointed to run AIG by Eliot Spitzer after he kicked out Hank Greenberg for a laundry list of bad deeds. Just like Chuck Prince was appointed to run Citigroup (NYSE: C) (Cramer's Take) when Spitzer booted Sandy Weill, and Mike Cherkasky was appointed to run Marsh & McLennan (NYSE: MMC) (Cramer's Take) when Spitzer axed Jeffrey Greenberg.

All three men were brought in to clean up the mess. Both Prince and Cherkasky were lawyers who were way over their heads as operators.

Prince presided over the destruction of a great American bank -- although it was kind of a re-destruction in light of how bad it was in 1990 -- when he allowed billions in off-balance-sheet borrowings that he simply did not understand.

Former Citigroup (NYSE: C) Chief Executive Chuck Prince isn't going to feel the pinch of the worst real estate market in a generation that he helped create.

Prince has put his place in Greenwich, Connecticut -- a tony New York City suburb that is home to countless hedge funds and celebrities such as Tommy Hilfinger and Regis Philbin -- up for sale at the asking price of $6.15 million, according to Bloomberg News. The Tudor-style manor house was sold in 1996 for $2.27 million, according to ZIllow.com. By my calculations, that would be a profit of 170%.

Too bad that most homeowners aren't as fortunate as Mr. Prince. The National Association of Realtors is due to release its figures for December home sales later this week, and it isn't going to be pretty. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News expect sales to have fallen 1% to 4.95 million, the fewest since records began in 1999.

The former Wall Street hot-shot, though, doesn't need to concern himself with the needs of ordinary folks anymore. He was pushed out the door at Citigroup with a retirement package worth about $60 million. "By retiring rather than being fired, he preserved the right to keep about 743,640 Citigroup shares with a market value of about $26.7 million, compensation consultant Brian Foley based in White Plains, New York, said at the time," Bloomberg notes.

Prince's realtor told Bloomberg that the Greenwich house, which includes an entrance hall with barrel-vaulted ceilings, an exercise room with a sauna and shower and a dining room that sits 12, "no longer meets his needs." Prince also has a place on New York's Park Avenue.

It must be nice to be able to live your life not having to face the consequences of your actions.

It seems like everybody loves to whine about how much CEOs earn, especially when they bank after screwing up big time. Some recent examples include E*Trade (NASDAQ: ETFC)'s Mitchell Caplan securing $11 million, Countrywide Financial (NYSE: CFC)'s Angelo Mozilo corralling $110 million, Citigroup (NYSE: C)'s Chuck Prince snagging $140 million and Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER)'s Stanley O'Neal pocketing a cool $161 million. Boo hoo, what about the poor shareholders?

Forget the shareholders, I say more power to these CEOs! That's right, quit your whining and accept it -- Wall Street is all about taking as much as you can, there's no compassion involved and anybody who thinks differently is in for a big surprise.

Maybe you should be congratulating these executives on their ability to get to the top and get paid for their efforts. So what if their stocks drop and all their plans go up in flames -- why shouldn't they be compensated for all their hard work and the sacrifices they've made over the years? Over the past two decades, you lazy buy-and-hold shareholders have been spoiled with excess returns, and now that you're losing, you're angry that not everyone is down in the pits with you.

Is it better to invest in a company whose CEO is a star or a company that breeds generations of outstanding CEOs? If you think a star CEO is better, I have two stocks to consider -- but also one to avoid. And if you think a CEO breeding ground is better, one stock comes to mind.

Today, I appeared on CNBC's Squawk Box this morning with Yale's Jeff Sonnenfeld to give my picks for the three best and worst CEOs of 2007. Here are the three best CEOs along with the name of the company, the stock price performance over the last year, and my reasons:

• Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) +144%. Successful iPhone introduction with a million units sold in its first 74 days (some estimate Apple will announce it's sold five million in mid-January) plus outstanding performance of Apple retail stores -- they account for 20% of Apple revenue and those revenues have grown 42% in the last year while the stores earn $4,000 per square foot -- much more than competitors. At a Price/Earnings to Growth (PEG) of 1.8 it remains to be seen whether Apple can grow enough to justify its P/E of 50.
• Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.A) +28%. Berkshire's stock had a great year -- it has not done as well since 1998 when it rose 52%. Berkshire's return on equity is up from 11% in 2006 to almost 16% as of September. Berkshire is a safe haven stock and Buffett continues to find places to invest his $47 billion in cash. One caution -- Barron's thinks that Berkshire stock is 10% overvalued.
• Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS) +6%. Only firm to make money while peers lost billions -- its short position of the ABX index--which represents a basket of credit default swaps on mortgage-backed securities- yielded $4 billion in profit -- offsetting a $2 billion loss in its $10 billion CDO portfolios. I was impressed by the way Blankfein carried Goldman's culture of encouraging intellectual debate between lower-level traders and top executives to arrive at the best decisions. Goldman trades at a P/E of 8.6 and its earnings are expected to grow 4% next year. But that forecast is a real toss up so if you buy the stock, take a long term view.

As expected, Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) today named Vikram Pandit as its new CEO, replacing the hugely unpopular Charles Prince. Acting CEO Win Bischoff replaced former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin as chairman. Rubin didn't want the job permanently.

As pundits including CNBC's Charles Gasparino pointed out, Citigroup's board didn't feel that Pandit had enough experience to get both jobs. That's no slight against Pandit, who joined New York-based Citigroup after selling the company his hedge fund for $900 million. Few if any people are experienced in the huge variety of business at Citigroup which is why Pandit says "simplifying the company's organizational structure and aligning our businesses and resources with appropriate goals and economic realities will be among our initial priorities."

So what does that mean?

Will Citigroup exit its retail business and focus on corporate banking? Are more job cuts coming down the pike? Investors are demanding quick answers to these and many other questions.

``They need somebody who can get in there and put some color on exactly where the risks are and what they're doing to address that,'' Johnson Asset Management analyst William Fitzpatrick, told Bloomberg News. ``The stock's been in freefall for the last couple of months.''

Shares of Citigroup, which are down 40% this year, fell further today with other financial stocks amid disappointment over the Fed's rate cut announcement

The New York Times reports that Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) is considering charisma as a test for its next CEO. And Vikram Pandit, the PhD in Finance and former professor, is thought to lack charisma -- thus lowering his attractiveness as a choice.

I have limited enthusiasm for Pandit because he has no experience managing a consumer bank, but I don't understand why charisma is a concern. Did Chuck Prince have charisma? If charisma is so important to Citigroup's board, why not hire George Clooney or Brad Pitt? Why not Angelina Jolie or Julia Roberts?

The fact that Citigroup is having so much trouble filling its CEO position tells me that the concept of Citigroup -- as it's currently organized -- is fraught with more peril than opportunity. The most capable potential candidates -- such as Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson who oversaw a great run at Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS) -- must be put off by the black hole of unknown financial problems and the complexity of managing Citigroup's warring fiefdoms.

The suggestion that Citigroup is considering charisma in its decision makes me think it needs a board overhaul.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns Citigroup shares and has no financial interest in Goldman Sachs.

Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) may name Vikram Pandit, the former Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) executive who sold his hedge fund to the New York-based financial services giant for $800 million in July, as the company's new CEO this week, according to various media reports.

The leak of Pandit's front-runner status is an interesting one. Clearly, the beleaguered Wall Street firm thinks that his appointment as CEO is going to be criticized by shareholders, so it decided to "get ahead of the story."

The problem, it seems, may be with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who became chairman after Chuck Prince was ousted. Rubin doesn't want the job permanently, which raises the question of whether Citigroup will ask him to stick around for a while if Pandit becomes CEO, whether it names a new chairman or whether it gives Pandit both jobs from the start, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Citigroup is in a pickle.

Shareholders abhor a leadership vacuum, but want the next CEO to be someone with whom they have absolute confidence. But if CItigroup doesn't give Pandit both jobs or a clear path toward both jobs, there is a good chance that he will be hired away by a rival firm.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says this bank is too big to be ignored by the government; if it goes, we all go.

Citigroup (NYSE: C)'s (Cramer's Take) to blame for so much that is wrong right now that it seems imperative that someone step in and renounce most of the actions that Chuck Prince put into place and bail out the other parts swiftly to become a plain old bank (POB?) as soon as possible.

We are quick -- depending upon political orientation or sensibilities -- to blame either the aggressive lenders or the irresponsible borrowers. I don't even care any more. What matters is capital, raising capital fast and Citigroup must quickly dismantle the acquisitions Prince made, including the disastrous Japan incursion, and then start selling off businesses and get the government to help bail it out by injecting itself into the structured investment vehicle process. The time has long since passed to worry about moral hazard. The action in Citigroup is critical right now because of a series of horrible decisions made by Prince to get much bigger in mortgages right at the end of the boom.

It must sell its mortgage servicing portfolio, too, agreeing to give some guarantees for some amount of money owed to the buyer as servicing rights can be a lucrative business. The fact that Treasury seems "somewhat" engaged (my quotes) is not enough. The problem at this bank is too big to be ignored by the U.S. government. Put simply, if Citigroup goes, we all go.

With all the bad PR surrounding the departure of Citigroup's (NYSE: C) CEO Chuck Prince, along with Merrill Lynch's (NYSE: MER) CEO Stanley O'Neill, not to mention their huge severance packages, it's refreshing to see a company where the CEO actually puts his money where his mouth is and invests in the stock of the company he runs.

News that Wachovia (NYSE: WB) CEO Ken Thompson bought 100,000 shares this past Friday, to go along with the 37,000 he bought earlier last week, is a telling sign that not only does he pay lip service to his company's stock being undervalued, but has actually invested millions of his own dollars to back it up.

With the debate over executive compensation heating up, and investor cynicism towards CEOs at an all time high, this move buy Thompson is commendable. How many stories have we read about CEOs making large salaries, getting enormous bonuses and the stock price continues to drop?

Kudos to Thompson, and may his large investment pay off.

Aaron Katsman is the lead Portfolio Manager and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. and Senior Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com. Disclosure: Writer holds no position in any stock mentioned as of 11/21/07.

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase's (NYSE: JPM) CEO, would be a great replacement for Citigroup Inc.'s (NYSE: C) recently retired CEO Chuck Prince. The only problem is that Dimon already has a job.

But Dimon -- who was Citi ex-CEO Sandy Weill's right hand man until Weill fired him for not giving his daughter a good enough job -- would probably enjoy running a combined Citi-JPMorgan Chase. After all, after he left Citi, he took over Bank One which merged with JPMorgan Chase. And then Dimon took over from its former CEO, Bill Harrison. But a Citi-JPMorgan Chase combination could land Dimon in Sandy Weill's old slot once such a deal closed.

Such a merger would probably be couched as a merger of equals. JPMorgan Chase's market capitalization of $140 billion is currently less than Citi's ($160 billion). But at the rate Citi is falling, that valuation gap probably won't last long. Then there's the little matter of the deposit cap -- no bank can control more than 10% of U.S. deposits. With combined deposits of $1.5 trillion -- which includes Citi's international deposits -- the combined banks would probably control more than 10% of the U.S.'s $7.5 trillion (as of January 2007) in deposits.

So the merged companies would need to divest some branches if they wanted the deal to go through and Dimon would not be able to take over officially until after the merger closed. But these seem like small prices to pay to get a good CEO for Citi.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns Citigroup shares and has no financial interest in JPMorgan Chase.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) analyst William F. Tonona put a "sell" rating -- Wall Street's equivalent of an F minus -- on Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C)'s shares about five months too late. Is it any wonder that many money managers ignore analyst stock ratings entirely?

Like most analysts, Tonona seems to excel at telling investors what they already know such as "the lack of leadership at this point in Citi's storied history could not have come at a worse time." and "it will likely take the new CEO some time before he or she decides on the appropriate course of action to undertake.''

Citigroup has problems? Get out of town.

Tonona's call is a month after Deutche Bank AG (NYSE: DB) put a sell on Citigroup. At least these analysts are moving in the right direction. Five analysts rate the stock a strong buy, six a buy and seven a hold, according to Thomson Financial. Why aren't there more sells?

Looks like Citigroup investors are way ahead of the analysts who are paid big bucks to follow the stock.

Shareholder discontent, especially top stockholder Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, helped push out Chief Executive Chuck Prince on November 4 after the company announced an $11 billion write down because of declining value of subprime mortgages. Shares of New York-based Citigroup are down more than 40% this year.

Too bad analysts can travel back in time so their research can be relevant.

New York Stock Exchange Chief Executive John Thain has been picked by Merrill Lynch & Co. (NYSE: MER) to be its next CEO, according to media reports.

The New York Post, which broke the story, writes "The move is a huge coup for Merrill and board member Alberto Cribiore, who has led the search for a new CEO after (Stan) O'Neal resigned on Oct. 30."

But Merrill's quick move is bad news for CItigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), which had wanted to hire Thain to replace its unpopular (and now ex) CEO Chuck Prince, the Post says.

The move is unexpected, according to the Wall Street Journal [subscription required], which said "insiders on Wall Street" had speculated that BlackRock Inc. CEO Larry Fink would get the job. CNBC is reporting that Fink was offered the job but turned it down.

Thain's departure from NYSE Euronext (NYSE: NYX) isn't a shock. He viewed the job, which he got after the departure of Richard Grasso, as a public service, according to the Journal. Shares of Merrill Lynch, down more than 35% this year, rallied on the news, rising $2.82, or 5%, to $59.75. NYSE Euonext and Citigroup were little changed.

The reshuffling of Wall Street's top management is far from over. Watch this space.