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...success of Citi's dealmakers comes as a surprise because the sprawling bank has generated nothing but frightening headlines in recent months. Like the other big banks, Citi received billions in aid from the government, and has been back to the government's well more often than most. Last month, the Treasury, along with private investors, agreed to convert some of their Citigroup preferred shares into common stock, which will strengthen the company's capital position. All told, the government has injected $45 billion into Citi by buying preferred shares; it has also insured the bank against losses...
Hidden by the big bottom-line losses are a number of Citi businesses that seem to be doing well. Along with mergers and acquisitions, analysts point to Citi's foreign-currency trading divisions and its business of processing payments and moving money around the world as two other bright spots. Earlier this month, Citi CEO Vikram Pandit said his bank was profitable in the first two months of the year. "M&A alone is not a big enough businesses to swing the bank," says analyst Richard Bove, who follows bank stocks at Rochdale Securities. "But put them all together, along...
Boutique firms believe that Citi's troubles will shift the balance in the M&A business again. "We are being approached by more and more clients who are concerned about getting services from entities that are having trouble," says Kenneth Berliner, who is the president of top boutique investment bank Peter J. Solomon. "How much longer are the bankers who work there going to stick around...
...time being, Citi's M&A team appears unaffected. Shafir says none of the hundred bankers who work in his division have left the firm on their own. And the firm is expected to rank among the top global M&A advisers when the so-called League Tables that rank investment banks come out for the first quarter of 2009 in the next week...
Shafir says despite the swirl of bad news surrounding Citi and Wall Street in general, he and his bankers have stayed focused. He also notes that last Thursday when the House resolution was passed to impose a special bonus tax on employees of many troubled financial institutions, including Citi, nothing out of the ordinary happened in Citi's offices. He says he hasn't had to spend a lot of time defending the firm, nor has he noticed any government intervention in running his part of the business. "In the last several months I have gotten calls from friends asking...