Word: citicorps
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Despite those risks, Wall Street gave Citicorp a vote of confidence. At first, apprehensions about the bank's write-off announcement rekindled the stock market's hair-trigger fear of a banking crisis. Partly as a result, the Dow Jones average of 30 industrial stocks took a nose dive of 37.38 points on Tuesday, just before Chairman Reed made his disclosure. The market quickly stabilized the next day, and Citicorp's stock rose to close the week at 55 3/ 8, up 4. Investors praised Citicorp's openness. Said an approving Lowell Bryan, a director of the Manhattan-based McKinsey...
Treasury Secretary James Baker gave Reed a more tepid endorsement. Said he: "I venture that all in all it will be seen as a positive step." Baker, who presumably had concerns that Citicorp's actions might discourage other banks from participating in his Third World initiative, nonetheless expressed hope that the bank will continue lending in Latin America, where it has $14.8 billion in loans outstanding. Citicorp is particularly exposed in Brazil ($4.6 billion), Mexico ($2.9 billion), Argentina ($1.5 billion) and Venezuela ($1 billion...
...Third World countries, government officials were loath to criticize Citicorp's new hard-nosed policy. Brazil's Finance Minister, Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira, said he saw the bank's move as a prudent shoring up of its foundations. Said a top Argentine official: "It's the first sign that U.S. ^ banks are prepared to share the burden of the debt crisis." Other foreign moneymen welcomed Citicorp's action because it might mean that all U.S. banks will start treating Third World debt under the same terms as Japanese, West German and Swiss banks, which have already established substantial loss reserves...
...Reed, 48, who has been Citicorp's chairman since 1984, the daring new policy highlights his emergence as the country's most influential banker (see box). By making such a turnabout on the loans, Reed is moving out of the shadow of his predecessor and mentor, Walter Wriston, who was largely responsible for Citicorp's eightfold expansion between 1967 and his retirement. Wriston was also the premier spokesmen for the go-go lending policies of U.S. banks in the 1970s. Even though to some extent Reed's current action repudiates his former boss's strategy, most bankers think Wriston would...
What Reed was doing could perhaps best be described as preventive medicine. The youthful chairman could see that Citicorp's hefty Third World commitment, which forms more than 10% of the bank's total loan portfolio, posed a severe threat to the bank's future prosperity. The income from those loans was dwindling because of all the concessionary terms -- lengthened repayment schedules, lowered interest rates -- that creditors worldwide have been granting to Third World debtors in order to keep them from defaulting. Then the entire international credit edifice was badly shaken last February when Brazil announced an indefinite moratorium...