Citigroup (NYSE: C) recently revived advertising slogan is reassuring: "Citi never sleeps." The idea is that since it operates in 100 countries, there is always a Citi employee on the job. But even if you have 300,000 employees, a company can only survive if those people are doing the right things when they're on the job. If not, Citi might never sleep, but it could take a dirt nap.

Citi stock has lost half its value this week and, at $4.71, is down 92% from its September 2000 high of $57.50. Prince Alwaleed said it was dramatically undervalued -- and that was yesterday morning before it lost 26% of its value. I suggested yesterday that the Prince may have miscalculated. How so? If you think that value can be measured by comparing the stock price to potential earnings growth, then I think the Prince overestimated the earnings growth part . For instance, its global cards and consumer lending business makes up 67.3% of net revenues, and global cards shrank 40% in the third quarter.

Since the prince has so much of his diminishing wealth -- his investment fund was down 63% as of yesterday -- tied up in Citi stock, he may have decided that people's memory of his 1991 investment killing based on buying at split-adjusted $2.98 -- will draw in buyers. But things are different now. Citi has posted huge write-downs in four consecutive quarters of losses totaling $20 billion; nine of its investment funds have collapsed this year; it will lose money due to write-offs of consumer loans, commercial real estate, and mortgages; and it has trillions of exposure to derivatives and illiquid assets.

Continue reading Will Citi take a dirt nap?

Will Citi take a dirt nap? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Citigroup (NYSE: C) is about to raise $14 billion, but the press is a bit unclear about who is putting in the money.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, currently one of Citi's largest investors, will put in capital along with the China Development Bank. The CDB piece is probably $2 billion.

According to the FT.com "Under the proposal being discussed, the bulk of the money -- roughly $9bn -- would be most likely to come from China, people familiar with the negotiations say. The Kuwait Investment Authority would contribute about $1bn, while $2bn to $4bn would be raised through a public placement of shares."

Leaving aside the fact that two big newspapers have different accounts of the same news, Citigroup may be faced with a challenge from Congress over whether it is OK for such a large U.S. financial institution to have big blocks of its stock owned by foreign entities. Citi's role in lending, underwriting, and trading might be considered "strategic" by the U.S. government.

To investors, that matter of who owns what is hardly important. The big bank's market cap is down to $142 billion. Another $10 billion is significant dilution. In theory, it could push the Citi shares from $29 to $25 of below. The shares have a 52-week high of $55.55.

If the federal government is against having investors from overseas, the Fed should lend Citi $10 billion on its own.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Citigroup gets big bucks originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Wall Street banks such as Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) and Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) are sending their CEOs to the Middle East and Asia to restore their capital depleted by write-downs of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO). To raise $10 billion, for example, Bloomberg News reports that Citigroup is going back to the well of Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

Reuters reports that hedge funds have $2 trillion -- with almost $22 billion flowing into them in November 2007 alone. With so much money in hedge funds, much of which is in the U.S., I wonder why these Wall Street banks need to go overseas for capital.

Here are three guesses:

• Wall Street knows it can't pull the wool over the eyes of hedge fund managers. Would hedge funds demand to know how big the write-downs of CDOs and MBSs would be before agreeing to invest? Might hedge funds demand management changes before investing? Could hedge funds seek interest payments and option terms that the banks would find too onerous?

Continue reading Why won't hedge funds bet their $2 trillion to boost Wall Street capital?

Why won't hedge funds bet their $2 trillion to boost Wall Street capital? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 12 Jan 2008 11:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Citigroup gets $7.5 billion investment from Abu Dhabi originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 26 Nov 2007 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Those of you reading this while jammed into a center coach seat might want to move on to another story, one that doesn't deal with a Saudi prince's new ride, the 6,000 square foot 'Flying Palace" custom Airbus A380.

Billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is paying well over list ($320 million) for his sky limo/air estate. While Airbus would not reveal details of the customization, the possibilities are vast. The cabin is as wide as three Shaquile O'Neils laid end to end, as long as six Weinermobiles, with as much area as 24 rooms at Motel 6. That's plenty of room to pimp it up with a swimming pool, or a go-cart track, bowling alley, IMAX theater, quilt loom, foosball, lawn darts or Frisbee golf course, or sauna complete with its own live birch trees. Think on that the next time you try to prop your laptop on a tray the size of a dollar bill.

This is not the Prince's initial foray into luxury air travel. He is presently the only owner of a private Boeing (NYSE:BA)747, which will probably become his beater plane, the one the kids take to college.

Saudi prince buys his own pimped-out Airbus A380 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I can picture Sandy Weill, the former chairman of Citigroup (NYSE: C), now. He's probably pacing the floor of his penthouse apartment, wringing his hands, sweating, perhaps yelling into the phone at someone when he gets a chance. He must be all in a lather about Citigroup's drop in share price (down another 5% so far today to $35.91).

I co-wrote a book about Sandy Weill that came out in 2002 and one thing Mike Brewster and I posited is that Weill would like to run Citigroup until he met his maker. That wasn't in the cards, since he had to step down in 2003 after a series of scandals rocked the bank. And calling Weill the King of Capital, as we did in our book (King of Capital: Sandy Weill and the Making of Citigroup), didn't look so smart not too long after publication either.

Now I've been watching Maria Bartiromo on CNBC reporting that Weill does not want to run Citigroup, but will be happy to help out in the search for a new chief executive. Here's my interpretation: Of course he'd love to jump in and run the company again. He just knows the board could never give him the chance.

Continue reading Sandy Weill would love to run Citigroup again -- but there's no chance

Sandy Weill would love to run Citigroup again -- but there's no chance originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 05 Nov 2007 13:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.