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’Citi’s high carbs diet
It seems like more or less anything can be deemed an asset class these days.
Here’s the latest one from Citigroup analysts: ‘Carbs’. No that’s not McDonalds and Coca Cola, but Canada, Australia,
Everything’s not lost in a lost decade
The dreaded lost decade that is staring the developed world in the face might not be so bad after all. At least according to Citigroup’s glass-half-full equity strategy team.
Lost decades, defined as 10-year periods of painfully slow growth (circa 1 per cent per annum), are always painful for the wider economy but they need not be for equity investors.
When Italian bonds trade in zero gravity
The drama in the Italian bond market in recent days has naturally raised a lot of questions, not least as to how sustainable the current financing levels are.
Citi’s rates strategy boffins have been mulling “fair value”
A tale of two stock markets
US equities could be in line for a secular bull market as soon as next year, but European stocks should be handled with care.
That is a synopsis of the latest thinking from Citi. For more details read on:
Jefferies: for the love of a Greek God, how many times must we explain this?
Jefferies really wants you to know that its net position is “insignificant”.
In a statement released on Friday the broker took the rare step of disclosing not only the size of its dealings with peripheral Europe,
Bazooka with cheese
Where would financiers be without metaphors? Let’s take Citi as an example — although we are sure there are worse offenders.
In Tuesday’s FT, Citi’s chief economist, Willem Buiter, called for a bigger ‘bazooka’ to boost the firepower of the EFSF.
Citi: EM rate cutters sheathed
If you were expecting widespread easing of policy rates across the emerging world, think again.
Since the end of August three EM central banks have cut rates — Brazil, Israel and Indonesia – but don’t go expecting much more monetary easing,
Expectations and the EU
Apologies for being a downer on a Friday, but the upcoming EU summitS (yes, there will now be two) are unlikely to produce a bazooka-style solution.
Sure, you already know this, but Citi (the same bank who predicted the bazooka would turn out to be a peashooter) has captured the gloomy sentiment rather succinctly.
A genuinely stressful stress test
Wouldn’t it be nice if bank stress tests were, well, stressful?
Too often they look like they’re done by him:
When they should be done by her:
Fortunately Arbuthnot’s Mr. Banks, James Ferguson,
Bank of America – not Citi and not being bought by JPM
Turns out that some banks don’t need sovereigns to create their own funding loop problems.
Not for the first time, Bank of America is in a league of its own.
It’s a quick point made by Marc Ostwald of Monument Securities on Tuesday,
Closer to profits recession, global edition
Though perhaps still not that close.
And it’s not just a European thing, though by at least one model Europe does bear the highest risk of falling into a profits recession of any region in the world:
Goldman: this is not 2008
US financials are melting on Monday:
As at pixel time, we’re facing a broad-based sell-off but the banks are among the hardest hit.
However, Goldman Sachs, appropriately enough, reckons this will be a short-term soft patch.
Citi joins the European stress-test jamboree
Roll(over) up, roll(over) up, for the latest unofficial European bank stress test.
For previous editions see here, here, and here.
This week’s contestant: Citi.
And it has given us two for the price of one:
A Greek farce
Now — far be it from FT Alphaville to tell the Athens public prosecutor what to do, however…
Greece’s finance ministry has blamed a bank trader’s email for spreading rumours that the country will default this weekend.
Greece vs Citigroup
We have a name! Greece didn’t identify the bank they’re investigating for allegedly spreading rumours that it will restructure debt this weekend. (Which was a daft conjecture indeed.)
The Guardian has just identified which bank:
Further further reading
For the commute home, where your kids are tagging embarrassing pictures of you on Facebook,
- The Economist halts production for a month to let its readers catch up. (Or so says America’s finest news source.)
- The myth of the Fed’s “unprecedented”
Tepco and those nationalisation rumours
Shares in Japan’s distressed nuclear plant operator Tepco took a beating on Tuesday as rumours swirled that the government was preparing to nationalise the company.
According to Reuters:
Tokyo Electric’s future has been tenuous since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami struck its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex,
The reemergence of cov-lite loans
FT Alphaville noted last week that Citi analysts were predicting a return to the heady pre-crisis levels of leveraged buy-outs.
But, they argued, this time is kind of different: there will be fewer “mega-deals”
The Terra Firma response — IN FULL
After three years and a £1.75bn loss, is that it?
Terra Firma is pleased that EMI’s debt burden has been reduced through Citi agreeing to write down a substantial proportion of EMI’s debt.
Hmm.
Citi sued by Norwegian central bank
Inevitable, really. Though we wouldn’t have expected the staid Norwegian central bank to be the first (?) to take up legal arms.
After the US Securities and Exchange Commission exposed Citi’s super senior subprime slip — in which the bank misled investors over its subprime exposure between July and October 2007 — now come the lawsuits.
Mike Mayo’s Citi DTAaaaaaaattaaaaack!
Where oh where, did the Mike Mayo vs Citigroup dispute begin?
The CLSA bank analyst hit headlines last week after Fox Business News revealed Mayo had been “frozen out” by Citi. The reason? None other than Citi’s infamous deferred tax assets (DTAs) :
Banks’ buyback pain to be $17bn – $42bn, Fitch estimates
While the Firm uses the best information available to it in estimating its repurchase liability, the estimation process is inherently uncertain and requires the application of judgment.
- JP Morgan’s Q2 10-Q filing.
About that Lehman call…
It’s no secret that equity analysts tend to be an optimistic bunch, and that they didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory with their forecasts leading into the financial crisis.
Some decidedly egregious examples have now been posted by Economics of Contempt,
Citi’s super senior subprime SEC slip
One of these is a draft version of a third-quarter pre-earnings announcement Citigroup considered making in the credit-crunched October of 2007, in reference to its subprime exposure. The other is what actually went out.
Now, about that Citi muddle…
Some confusion in the market for C. on Thursday, after this story was published on Bloomberg:
July 15 (Bloomberg) — Citigroup Inc. said it misclassified as much as $9.2 billion of repurchase agreements and $1.9 billion of securities lending transactions as sales during the past three years.
A welcome plunge in rankings for Wall Street’s finest
There is one exclusive ranking in the financial world that Goldman Sachs’ chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and his high-earning counterparts at Citigroup and JPMorgan are very glad to be at the bottom end of — and that is the annual list of the best-paid finance industry CEOs.
Citi’s super-safe CDOs? Puh-lease
Reading the testimony of former Citi heads, at Wednesday’s FCIC hearing, could make one feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Citi, like so many others, was simply caught unaware by the sheer scale of the crisis.
Citi’s CDO woe: it’s all the consultants’ fault
Accountants and auditors – you can relax (though not for too long, because Repo 105 can’t just be shrugged off).
For a moment at least, the spotlight will turn to the consultants. As the FT reported on Wednesday: