Posts Tagged ‘banks’

Citibank Wins and Loses This Week – March 2010

Monday, March 29th, 2010

Citibank had both a good week and a bad week thanks to a court ruling that brought some millions into the company, and a fine due to some problems with the law. Next week, hopefully the bank will be able to recover from some bad press this week.

Citibank had a good week and a bad week depending on how you look at it. First, Citibank was ordered to pay a $1.25 million fine to settle allegations from roughly 35 state governments that stated that CitiFinancial failed to report approximately 91,127 residential mortgage loans to the U.S. government. This is required by law.

According to the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, the error was probably caused by an error in the internal systems of Citigroup that were undetected until bank regulators within Massachusetts looked into the situation. In the examination, it was found that loans made between 2004 and 2007 through Citigroup were not reported and therefore violated the Federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.

According to Citibank, the error was accidental and the company was trying to correct reports with the Federal Reserve. Citibank also said that no customers were harmed through the error.

Of course, it was not all bad for Citibank this week. Earlier in the week, $85.7 million was won by the company in a court judgment against Sheldon H. Solow.

The New York State Supreme Court granted the request of Citibank so that Citibank could collect fees and damages from the billionaire real estate developer. The suit stated that Citibank claimed that Solow failed to make payments on $503 million on a line of credit with the bank to develop a site along the East River in New York. The property was to be six apartment towers and a 1.4 million square foot office tower on the 10 acre site.

For Citibank, it was a big win and something to dull the fine that they had to pay to the government for the mortgage reporting problem. Citibank is expecting the weeks ahead to be a bit better as the company has begun to improve its stock standing over the past few weeks. In all, the financial sector has seen big improvements over 52 weeks and is one reason why the market is doing better in 2010 over 2009.

Citibank has been able to recover greatly from some tough times earlier in the 2008 and 2009. Through the foreclosures and problems, things have improved and if this week is any example, the company will be doing even better as time goes on. With a fine from the government, the company was able to rebound by making half a billion dollars in a court judgment thanks to some problems with a developer in New York City. When you lose $1.25 million and bring in $500 million, it is a good week for any company.

Further Reading:

CIT Bankruptcy Possibilities

Citibank Future

After USA who is the succeeder: The Next Big Super Power in 21st century

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Power Shift Paradigm

As we all understand, USA has dominated world economy since 1940′s. Since the middle of 17th century to 1940′s the world economy was dominated by Europe. And if we go back further in history, the dominance was between the Arab countries, India or China at different points of time. As we enter the 21st century people have started speculating this is going to be the century of China’s rebirth. This speculation is grounded on solid performance demonstrated by China in past several decades. Chinese economy is growing at 10% every year and is poised to overtake US economy by 2020. At the same time though there are many supporters of the belief that China’s economy would never be able to over take US economy because it is way too dependent on the external demand rather than internal demand. Another issue with China currently is that it is not a true democracy which poses a big threat in the long-run in terms of overall stability of the country if the leader decides to lose his mind :)

A new era of power concentration is emerging

At CompareBroker we believe that 21st century would be dominated by a completely new entity that was not even known in History. 21st century power house will not be any country but it will belong to the pool of large multinational corporations. Recently Coca Cola, the most recognized brand in the world, reported its first quarter earning. The net income attributable to share holders went up to $ 1.57 billion from 955 million mostly because of increase in sales in India and China. Further developing the idea of true global organization whose dominance is more widespread than any country alone. The Japanese foreign minister criticized the CEO of Toyota Motors recently for not ensuring the quality of their goods and hence harming the image of a country.

What is a multinational corporation?

It is a entity that belongs to over millions of investors with no limits on country boundaries and race or gender. Such a corporation usually has presence in almost every single country on the planet. Each of the investors have voting rights in the corporation just like voting right in a country. They can decide the CEO of the corporation (the president), the CFO (Chief Finance Offiicer) etc. These corporations have huge budgets, sometimes larger than several countries. The market caps of top three corporations of the world are above $400 billion (Exxon Mobil, Petro China and GE). This makes them bigger than the economies of about 180 countries in the world. Among them these companies own and have access to the most critical resources like Oil and most critical technologies like nuclear technology. Their presence is global, their influence in deciding policies is unmatched for. Their demise cannot be afforded as we saw in last financial crises where governments had to bailout Citi and GM.

So Same Question Again: Who is the new World Economic Leader?

So who would dominate the 21st century, would not be decided by nations but by multinational corporations. They have been talks of corporate social responsibilities of these organizations as they become bigger and bigger. I think by 2050 the sizes of these organization would be bigger than both US economy which is currently $ 13 trillion and Chinese economy which is currently $ 9 trillion. We would then begin the era of not dominance by US or China but by GE or PetroChina. Economy/money is going to be the new superpower in the 21st century.

My perspective on banking sector

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

The banking sector has faced harsh criticism over the past one year on how they handled their underwriting standards. They have also beeen criticized for the huge bonuses given in the sector.

I have two things to say to the critics:

1.) The growth that happened in US after the 1980 economic recession was primarily becuse of the finance industry starting to leverage the American economy. American as superpower would have lost to USSR if that had not happened. I agree that thye got really greedy in last 6 years but we should blame them for everything. They also heled us win the cold war.

2.) Giving huge bonus is not a bad thing. You need to invest in people.  A company that does not give bonus can never grow. If congress feels that the mangement is incompetent of these banks it should change the mangement not the bonus structure