This afternoon, shares of Citigroup (Ticker: C) traded as much as 17 percent higher after news broke that the company is selling Nikko Citigroup Ltd.
According to MarketWatch, Citigroup already had plans to sell Nikko Asset Management and Nikko Cordial Securities.
Nikko Cordial is the retail brokerage group. Nikko Citigroup is Japan’s investment banking unit.
According to Reuters, the deal for all three could reach $8 billion. We all know Citi could use the extra cash. The bank owes at least $45 billion in government loans.
The stock’s gains will be tested later this week when Citigroup reports first quarter earnings.
The news was originally reported by Kyodo News …read more

And then there were two…
Citigroup (Ticker: C), which I have pet-named the “Wal-Mart of the financials,” will split into two smaller companies, Citicorp and Citi Holdings. According to the Associated Press, Citicorp will host worldwide traditional banking activity and Citi Holdings will handle the bank’s “riskier assets and tougher-to-manage ventures.” 

Citigroup’s days of Tommy-esque operations have appeared to hit a road block after many speed pricey bumps:
May 2008: Citi announces plans to shed $400 billion in assets over the next two years.
June 2008: Investment bank “re-sizing” plan announced. Plan includes shedding 6,500 jobs.
August 2008: New York AG’s office announces SEC probe of Citigroup and his intent to …read more

Citigroup’s bailout deal was struck over a weekend in November. Just two months later, I thought this past weekend would reveal yet another big deal involving Citigroup. I may be a day or two off, but something is definitely cooking!

Sources told Bloomberg that Morgan Stanley (Ticker: MS) is negotiating with Citigroup (Ticker: C) to purchase a majority stake in Citi’s brokerage arm, Smith Barney.
According to the source, Morgan Stanley would pay cash for a 51 percent stake in a joint venture of the firms’ brokerage units. An AP source said the deal would lead Citi to a gain in the neighborhood of $5 billion after taxes. Morgan Stanley …read more

Most people expected thin trading during today’s shortened session and for the most part they were right, but a few bailout beggars saw huge gains and higher than average trading volume.
Today’s session closed at 1 p.m. EST, but that was more than enough time for Ford and Citigroup to earn the top spots for trading volume (this only includes individual stocks, not ETFs).
Ford rose 25 percent today, over 119 million shares were exchanged.  According to Yahoo, the average daily volume (using three months worth of data) for shares of Ford is about 73.7 million.  Citigroup rose 12.6 percent and saw 251 million …read more

Another late night weekend deal was struck between the Fed and a credit crunch casualty: Citigroup. 
In my previous post I just wrote about how shocked I was to see Citigroup make it through the weekend.  No sooner than I hit “Publish,” news broke that the U.S. government has agreed to bailout Citigroup!
Madness!!!

The world could not afford to let Citigroup fail.  Citi has a hand in all things money: retail banking, insurance, investments… you name it, they do it.  Citi operates in 140 countries and has $2 trillion in assets on the books.  According to MarketWatch, Citi has another $1.23 trillion in potentially troublesome …read more