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...Didn't the government already rescue Citigroup? True, this is not the first government handout. On Oct. 13, Treasury told Citi and eight other large banks that it would be buying billions of dollars worth of stock in their institutions, the opening move in a mass recapitalization plan for the banking sector. Citi got $25 billion in exchange for preferred shares on which it is to pay 5% interest for five years and then...
...last week, events took a turn for the worse. Negative reports on consumer default rates and troubling statistics on commercial loans unnerved investors. Two moves by Citi - taking $80 billion in risky assets off the auction block and transferring some mortgage-related securities held in an off-balance-sheet vehicle back onto its books - spooked shareholders already wary of what unknowns might be lurking. On Nov. 18, the company announced that it would be laying off about 50,000 of its employees, or 20% of its global workforce...
...much bad news. Citi stock plummeted, dropping 60% over the course of the week, to $3.77 a share. Meanwhile, other parts of the market confirmed Citi's stressed state. The cost of credit-default swaps that protect investors from losing money on Citi's bonds skyrocketed, signaling a lack of confidence in the bank's ability to survive. Bankruptcy rumors circulated, and fears grew that people doing business with Citi - including its retail banking customers - would pull their money. At that point, regulators felt they had no other option but to step...
...save Citi when other banks are going under? Citigroup, with $160 billion in revenue last year, more than 300,000 employees and tendrils in every corner of finance, both domestically and abroad, is the poster child for an institution that is allegedly "too big to fail." A much smaller financial institution, Lehman Brothers, was allowed to go down - and shock waves hit corners of the financial world, like money-market mutual funds, that no one had anticipated. The fear is not only of pain inflicted but also of unpredictability...
...Citi is not the first bank to hit the wall. When Washington Mutual, which had a balance sheet less than a third the size of Citi's, went down, the FDIC immediately flipped the company to JPMorgan Chase. But marrying off Citi was not a viable option. "There isn't anyone to hand Citi to," says Roy Smith, a professor of finance at New York University's Stern School. "This is the King Kong of banks." (See pictures of the global financial crisis...