Citi Shares Fall Despite Talks With Morgan Stanley

Citigroup Inc.'s stock sank Monday to its lowest levels since November as investors wondered how much more cash the troubled bank will need.

The Citigroup Center is shown in New York. Citigroup today reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $8.29 billion; its fifth straight quarterly loss.

(Mary Altaffer/AP Photo )

Citigroup Inc., in an effort to raise capital, is hammering out a deal to sell the bulk of its retail brokerage to Morgan Stanley. The joint venture — expected to be announced later this week — would lead to an after-tax gain for Citigroup of about $5 to $6 billion, a person close to the negotiations said Monday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the ongoing talks.

But maintaining cash levels that are high enough to make up for upcoming loan losses remains a big challenge for Citigroup.

"While we believe this deal will provide some near-term capital relief, more likely will be needed," Meredith Whitney, a financial analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., wrote in a note Monday.

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Citigroup stock fell $1.15, or 17 percent, to $5.60 Monday — making it by far the steepest decliner among the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones industrial average — even though many industry analysts were positive about the deal. Lauren Smith at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said in a note that the potential joint venture "seems like a win-win to us."

Morgan Stanley shares fell 27 cents to $18.79 after rising in earlier trading. Most bank stocks tumbled Monday after President-elect Barack Obama said he plans to fundamentally change the way the second half of the government's $700 billion financial bailout fund is spent. He said he will target housing and small businesses.

Citigroup lost more than $20 billion between October 2007 and October 2008, and is expected to post another deficit for the final quarter of last year when it reports those results next week. The government has already loaned Citigroup $45 billion, and agreed to absorb the losses on a huge pool of mortgages and other assets.

"We've seen various indications that Citibank's problems run deep. The fact that the government came in and backstopped some of their assets was one signal of that. Citi's selling the majority share of Smith Barney is probably another such signal," said Jim Wilcox, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.