Citi's Losses

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2013/01/citi-losses

From a Wall Street Journal editorial about Jack Lew, President Obama's nominee for Treasury Secretary:

Mr. Geithner succeeded in bailing out Citigroup and prevailed over Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Sheila Bair. Like these columns, Ms. Bair wanted to clean out Citi's management and asked her fellow regulators to consider putting it into receivership. In her recent memoir, Ms. Bair writes that when she suggested in early 2009 that Citi's private investors should take losses before the company received additional government assistance, "that was a nonstarter for Tim."

I have to say I found this passage pretty confusing. Citi's private investors, in early 2009 and after, did take losses. The price of their shares went way down. Their ownership stake was diluted. If Ms. Bair had gone ahead and put Citi "into receivership" it might have further weakened the confidence of investors in other financial institutions by making them worry that their own institutions would be the next targets.

by Editor  |  Jan 27, 2013 at 9:31 pm Related Topics:  Banking, Timothy Geithner receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list