Citibank has regained its top position after slipping to the second slot behind Bank of America in the previous rankings released in December 2007, compiled by global mobile and internet performance solutions provider Keynote Systems. Bank of America has slipped to the second position in the latest rankings released late last night and is followed by Wells Fargo and Chase at third and fourth ranks, respectively.
The New York Post has reported that the US, which is wrapping up stress tests on banks, may oust Vikram Pandit as Citi's CEO. Pandit's future at Citi has been hanging in the balance as the financial services major has already received three lifelines from the Federal government to stay afloat.
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The war between hackers and banks over ATM security will be dynamically redefined, notes Atanu Biswas.
Days after Citi's global CEO Vikram Pandit said the group planned to reduce head-count by 52,000, there are reports that the financial major will lay off over 1,000 employees in India. The financial services company has around 10,000 employees in India.
Value stocks and stocks in trouble can be hard to distinguish. It's all about the research.
Mobile phone maker Motorola's India-born chief Sanjay Jha has emerged America's top paid CEO, while Citigroup's Vikram Pandit tops the league among bailed out banks, a survey said.
In the last one month, the RBI has infused liquidity of Rs 2,70,000 crore (Rs 2,700 billion) by cutting the Cash Reserve Ratio (the amount banks must keep with the apex lender) by 350 basis points and Statutory Liquidity Ratio by 100 basis points. RBI has also reduced the short term lending rate (repo) by 150 basis points to 7.5 per cent from 9 per cent last month.
Citi CEO Vikram Pandit in an internal memo to the staff tried to allay fears over debt and its share price, which is hovering around $1. Pandit said in the memo that 'we were profitable through the first two months of 2009 and are having our best quarter-to-date performance since the third quarter of 2007.' He added that in January and February, the bank generated revenues of $19 billion before markdowns.
With their employee-friendly and innovative initiatives, two American corporate giants PepsiCo and Citigroup -- led by India-born chief executives have made into a list of best employers for multicultural women. Evaluating the presence and prominence of coloured women in the US corporate world, the list of 20 companies has been drawn up by US-based Working Mother magazine. It is primarily on the basis of diversity programmes for such employees.
The Treasury Department said it will convert about $25 billion of preferred shares into common stock provided private holders agree to the same terms, the government said in a statement on Friday. The conversion would give the US a 36 per cent stake in the New York-based firm.
RBI could ease monetary policy by mid-2009 when inflation moderates to the 8 per cent level, it said. While the US liquidity shocks didn't help, the tight funding conditions have more to do with India-specific factors, brought about initially by RBI tightening moves to fight soaring inflation, it said.
A major top management level churn is on in the country's financial services space, with the Aditya Birla group emerging among the biggest beneficiaries of this shake-out as it has attracted a large number of executives from other companies.
Appearing before the US house financial services committee along with seven other top US CEOs of companies which received a bailout fund from the federal government, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit said, "My compensation for the year 2008 was my salary, which is $ 1 million. I received no bonus. And as I stated earlier, I plan to take a $ 1 a year in salary and no bonus until we return to profitability."
Less than three weeks after the curbs on participatory notes, overseas investors are rushing to invest in the booming Indian stock markets directly by applying for Foreign Institutional Investor licences.
One thing that has never been a hard sell in Mumbai over the past few years is property. But last week, for the first time in 13 years, Mumbai's metropolitan authorities failed to sell government land in an auction in India's financial capital.
According to estimates by Citigroup India, P-note investments, excluding the underlying shares, account for 34 per cent of FII assets with custodians in BSE-500 companies. Sebi stipulates that P-Notes can account for up to 40 per cent of FII assets under custody. This leaves room for FIIs to increase their exposure through P-notes 6 percentage points.
They fell from some of the most powerful positions on earth.
Besides, the Vikram Pandit-led bank has hinted at further job cuts in the coming days, after already having cut down or announced plans to bring down its workforce to below 3,00,000 employees from more than 3,75,000 at the end of 2007. In an internal mail to all its employees in the US, Citi's human resources head Paul McKinnon said on Monday that it would eliminate some 'supplemental severance payment' for the employees with 10 or more years of service.
A robust growth in revenue notwithstanding, analysts are sceptical about the first report card of India Inc in the current fiscal and expect the continuing cost pressures to lead to a fall in their first quarter profitability.
The federal bailout calmed the market and seems to fence off Citi's toxic assets. But some investors wonder what it says about the state of other banks.
Vikram Pandit may thank the TINA (There Is No Alternative) factor for still being in job as Citigroup CEO, as the US government reportedly did not push for his ouster in its rescue package for the troubled bank partly because there was no "obvious" successor.
The job of running crisis-ridden Citigroup is still with India-born Vikram Pandit, who revived the American behemoth's years-old tag line -- Citi Never Sleeps -- but had to seek help worth billions of dollars from the US government to keep the bank afloat.
Among the blizzard of pink slips on Wall Street, some banks are growing their staffs ... others aren't.
Financial services major Citigroup is planning to slash as many as 50,000 jobs in the next five to six months and also intends to reduce costs by 20 per cent.The number of jobs cuts may rise as high as 50,000 in order to bring the company's workforce to about 300,000 worldwide.
Flipkart has not been able to process with its plans of getting into the grocery vertical and is stuck on running pilots in select cities.
State-owned India Infrastructure Finance Company Ltd has tied up with Infrastructure Development Finance Company, and global equity investors Citigroup Inc and Blackstone Group to launch a $5 billion infrastructure fund.
It's a difficult time for banks both at home and abroad. But Sanjay Nayar, Chief Executive Officer, Citi India, shrugs off Citigroup's problems in the US saying they haven't really impacted the Indian operations. Nayar admits there have been a few problems with the consumer finance business but tells Business Standard that Citi's India operations are well-positioned to see double digit growth over the next few years.
Foreign investors sold $2.8 bn stocks in the past quarter alone. FIIs trimmed their holding in the BSE 500 companies by nearly two percentage points to 17.8 per cent, bringing it back to June 2005 levels, according to a Citigroup report. FIIs pulled out shares worth $2.8 billion over the past quarter.
Hyderabad-based ICSA (India) is divesting 14 per cent of its stake to Citigroup Venture Capital International Growth Partnership Mauritius for $30 million
Unfortunately, there is no tried and true formula that transcends industries and business cycles. Tackle the problem in logical steps.
Suzlon Energy, one of the top five wind energy manufacturers in the world, plans to raise $500 million (Rs 2,000 crore) through the Qualified Institutional Placement (QIP) route to fund its expansion plans.
Ranbaxy Laboratories, India's biggest drugmaker, may lose as much as $140 million of revenue in 2009 after the US drug regulator blocked sale of more than 30 generic medicines and 7 APIs made in two factories of the company, according to analysts.
ICICI Bank, the country's second-largest bank, has stopped lending to borrowers from the sub-prime segment, while the biggest player in small loans, Citigroup, has made its processes more stringent.
The sub-prime loss-hit Citigroup is on a cost-cutting exercise in its Indian operations. CitiFinancial, its consumer finance unit, which is also reeling under the burden of rising bad loans, is considering closing about 100 of its 450 branches in India.
It has been one of the weakest starts to the year since 1970 as concerns over undercapitalised financials sector companies, earnings risks, accelerated inflation and higher interest rates kept investors cautious, the world's biggest bank said. It further added that valuations indicate equities are cheap relative to history and especially cheap relative to other assets.
Industry greats like Ratan Tata, Lakshmi Mittal, Narayana Murthy and P R S Oberoi have been nominated for this years Padma Vibhushan.
Some of the world's top hedge funds have been granted direct entry into the Indian stock markets, nearly three months after the Securities and Exchange Board of India imposed curbs on foreign investments through the participatory note (P-note) route.
After the scandals of the 1990s, didn't investment banks put sexist employment practices behind them? Evidently not.
This week, Citigroup named as chief executive Vikram Pandit, a cerebral strategist with a degree in electrical engineering and one of the best minds in the business.
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