Citigroup

Regarding the April 3 editorial "Wrong Relief": We at Citigroup take strong exception to the incorrect assertion that we would benefit from the proposed extension of the net-operating-loss "carryback" in the Senate housing bill, as well as to the implication in the editorial that we lobbied for the inclusion of this provision in the bill. For the record, Citigroup has not sought to change the tax carryback provisions for net operating losses. Historically, we have been one of the largest U.S. taxpayers and pay our fair share of taxes.

A federal judge tentatively approved on Tuesday a record $602 million insider trading settlement between federal regulators and SAC Capital Advisors, but there was a hitch. U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan approved just about every aspect of the deal that the Securities and Exchange Commission negotiated with the storied hedge fund. But he questioned whether SAC should have to admit wrongdoing and held off on final approval until a similar issue involving Citigroup is...

Federal regulators have taken an unusually active role in the affairs of Citigroup , telling the New York financial giant that it must raise capital from private sources and take whatever steps are necessary to restore investor confidence in its financial viability, according to people familiar with the situation. Citigroup's deal to spin off its Smith Barney retail brokerage, announced yesterday, is the first step in a broader plan to sell valuable business units to raise the money that the company needs to endure, those sources...

The Senate confirmed Jack Lew as Treasury secretary Wednesday, giving him broad responsibilities over the U.S. economy just as the country faces potentially severe budget cuts , a still-tepid recovery and an overhaul of financial regulations that remains incomplete. After being grilled by Republican lawmakers in recent weeks over his work and pay at bailout recipient Citigroup , Lew was given the Senate's green light in a 71 to 26 vote. Lew follows Timothy F. Geithner, whose tenure drew controversy after the...

The federal government plans to take a substantial ownership stake in Citigroup , launching the Obama administration's new strategy to prevent the failure of any more large banks, according to sources familiar with the matter. The deal, which the sources said was still being negotiated last night, is designed to reassure investors that Citigroup has the resources needed to survive the recession by increasing the company's reserves against future losses. The deal would not involve new money from taxpayers.

The government said last night that it will provide a multibillion-dollar backstop for Citigroup, revamping emergency efforts yet again to head off the failure of a company more deeply intertwined with the financial system than nearly any other. The Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced just before midnight Monday that they will protect Citigroup, one of the nation's largest banks, against potential losses on a $306 billion pool of troubled assets.

Citigroup has ended its pursuit of Wachovia , allowing Wells Fargo to proceed with its $15 billion deal to buy the troubled Charlotte bank and emerge as one of the largest retail and commercial banks in the United States. Citigroup said, however, that it would continue to press a lawsuit seeking more than $60 billion from Wells Fargo and Wachovia for striking a deal after Wachovia had agreed to negotiate exclusively with Citigroup. The announcement ends two weeks of financial, legal and political...

NEW YORK -- Citigroup Inc. is removing one of the irritants in its relationship with the government, its Phibro commodities trading division that is paying one trader an estimated $100 million this year. The deal announced Friday carries a tradeoff for Citigroup: While the $250 million sale to Occidental Petroleum Corp. means a bit less government scrutiny, it also means the bank is losing hundreds of millions of dollars in annual income that could help repay $49 billion in bailout money.

NEW YORK, April 18 -- The bad news from Citigroup on Friday just kept coming: Losses of more than $5 billion. Revenue down 48 percent. Fresh write-downs and set-asides for expected losses on bad debt of $16 billion. And finally, 9,000 job cuts. Citigroup's report of first-quarter results was worse than most analysts expected, adding to the series of grim earnings announced this week by financial institutions. Earlier, Merrill Lynch and Wachovia reported losses, and J.P. Morgan Chase said its profit declined by...

CORRECTION: The article about Wells Fargo and Citigroup agreeing to repay the loans they received from the federal government incorrectly said that Wells Fargo was issuing stock to the company's benefit plan in place of cash compensation to employees. The stock is being issued both to the benefit plan and to employees in lieu of some of their cash compensation. The federal government continued to wind down its bailout of the nation's biggest banks on Monday, reaching an agreement to eliminate...

Capital One Financial, the nation's third-largest issuer of store-branded plastic, said Monday that it agreed to sell its portfolio of Best Buy credit card accounts to Citigroup, just two years after buying it. The move took some bank analysts by surprise because Capital One had recently been bulking up its store card business. Officials at Capital One declined to provide details about the decision. The McLean-based financial firm also did not disclose the sales price but said that the value of the Best Buy...

Treasury secretary nominee Jack Lew on Wednesday defended his work at Citigroup and argued that his long career in government and business qualified him to become the President Obama's top economic adviser. After more than three hours of questions at his confirmation hearing, Lew appeared unruffled by grilling from Republicans about a wide range of topics, from his investment in a fund registered in the Cayman Islands to his thoughts on comprehensive tax...

President Obama won reelection in part by beating up on his opponent for receiving big corporate payouts in exchange for dubious work and for socking away money in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands. So it's a bit, well, rich that Obama chose as his new Treasury secretary a man who received a big corporate payout for dubious work and who socked away money in the Cayman Islands. This awkward fact pattern forced a role reversal Wednesday on Capitol Hill, as Obama's nominee, Jack Lew, came before the...

GOP senators plan to ask pointed questions about Jack Lew's work at Citigroup — and his pay at the bailed-out bank — when the Treasury nominee appears before a Senate panel for his confirmation hearing Wednesday, officials said Monday. Some Republicans think Lew has not provided satisfactory answers about his exact responsibilities at the bank during the financial crisis, congressional staffers say. The issue is relevant, they say, because the Treasury secretary has...

A day after New Year's in 2008, Citigroup announced that one of its most troubled units had a new chief operating officer : Jack Lew. In a sea of Wall Street traders and hedge fund managers, Lew stood out. He was a career government bureaucrat who had joined Citigroup 18 months earlier hoping to gain experience in the business world. Now he was getting more than he could have imagined. In the following months, as the entire bank teetered, Lew's group would cope with massive losses,...

Treasury secretary nominee Jack Lew has spent most of his career in government, but during the financial crisis, he was embedded inside one of the country's biggest banks as it nearly imploded. From 2006 to 2008, he worked at Citigroup in two major roles, a notable line in his résumégiven that as Treasury secretary, he would be charged with implementing new rules regulating Wall Street. But Lew did not have just any position at the bank. In early 2008, he became a top executive in the...

The bailed-out banking giant Citigroup lost $7.6 billion in the final three months of last year, underscoring the firm's continuing troubles with bad mortgages and credit card loans as it tries to wrest itself from the hands of taxpayers. The loss pushed the bank into the red for the full year and solidified its standing as one of the largest and most wounded firms to survive the financial crisis. Although several other banks have capitalized on Wall Street's rebound to pay back the government and relieve themselves of partial...

A House subcommittee said Thursday that it will investigate the Treasury Department's decision to change a long-standing law so that Citigroup could keep billions of dollars in tax breaks. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) called Treasury's action a "farce" and an "outrage" during a hearing Thursday of the domestic policy subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Kucinich, the subcommittee chairman, said that he would demand an explanation from Treasury officials.

Citigroup on Wednesday agreed to pay $590 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by investors alleging that the New York bank failed to disclose its exposure to toxic subprime mortgage debt. In the run-up to the financial crisis, the bank, like many other big financial institutions, either held or sold securities that were essentially giant pools of shoddy mortgages. When waves of struggling homeowners stopped making their monthly payments, these securities exacerbated the mortgage defaults, caused massive...

WHEN CONGRESS first considered allowing shareholders to cast a nonbinding vote on executive compensation — "say on pay" — three years ago, we were skeptical . One of our concerns was that the votes would be meaningless if they were truly nonbinding. The other concern was that "say on pay" might prove harmful if it empowered inexpert shareholders motivated by desire for short-term profits. But Congress made "say on pay" part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law; and on...