« The S&P 500 Bounces Off 1,200 | Main | Poll: How Would You Rate the Economy? »

From Bloomberg:

Citigroup Inc., the biggest U.S. bank, fell to the lowest level in New York trading since former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sanford Weill created the company through a merger in October 1998.

Citigroup, which has lost almost half its value on the New York Stock Exchange this year, dropped 43 cents to $14.79 at 9:31 a.m., the lowest since Oct. 8, 1998, the day the New York-based bank was formed through the $36 billion combination of Travelers Group Inc. and Citicorp.

It’s rail on Citigroup Day at Crossing Wall Street. It turns out the bank also likes to keep a couple of assets “off the balance sheet.” By couple, I mean $1.1 trillion.

When talking about Citigroup, it’s hard to explain how large this company—and I think its size is part of the problem. Citi has 374,000 employees which isn’t much less than the size of Washington. Citi’s payroll, however, will be declining over the next few months.

According to Citi’s most recent balance sheet, the company has assets of $2.187 trillion, and liabilities of $2.087 trillion. That’s amazingly large, and that’s just the stuff on the books.

The company is due to report earnings on Friday and it won’t be pretty. The analysts are all over the map on this one, but the consensus is listed as -61 cents a share. I think taking the under is a pretty safe bet.

Six months ago, the company reported a loss of nearly $10 billion. Three months ago, Citi reported a loss of $5 billion.

Posted by edelfenbein at July 15, 2008 11:15 AM