Citi’s loss is Wall Street’s gain

Francesco Guerrera on Wall Street’s contrarian vote of confidence after Citigroup’s $5.1bn loss
As the first-quarter earnings season kicks off, investors are expecting bad news from Wall Street as investment banks reveal the damage of recent financial turmoil. Read FT.com’s news and analysis as each bank announces its earnings
Bank of America slammed by writedowns and rising credit costs, said earnings dropped nearly 80 per cent in the first quarter to $1.2bn
Citigroup underlined the plight of financial firms squeezed by the credit crunch and the slowing US economy by announcing a $5.1bn quarterly loss, nearly $16bn in writedowns and 9,000 job cuts
Vikram Pandit, Citigroup’s chief executive, has vowed to slash the beleaguered financial group’s cost base by up to 20 per cent, deepening fears that Wall Street and the City of London are about to be hit by tens of thousands of additional job losses

Francesco Guerrera on Wall Street’s contrarian vote of confidence after Citigroup’s $5.1bn loss

Ben White on the Wall Street bank’s $2bn quarterly loss and $6bn write-down

March 18: Lehman Brothers reported net income of $489m – a 57 per cent fall on last year – largely due to a sharp fall in fixed income revenues

March 19: Morgan Stanley net income fell 42 per cent to $1.55bn, or $1.45 a share, from the year-earlier period. Analysts had expected income of only $1.03 per share

March 18: Goldman Sachs net income fell to $1.51bn, or $3.23 a share from $3.2bn a year ago. Analysts expected earnings of $2.59 a share

April 14: Bear Stearns reports a 79 per cent drop in quarterly net income to $115m, or 86 cents a share, from $554m, or $3.82, a year earlier. Securities regulators warned Bear Stearns that they may take enforcement action against the company as part of a municipal-bond probe

April 14: Wachovia said it planned to raise $7bn in capital through a public offering as it slashed its dividend and slumped to a first quarter loss

April 17: Merrill Lynch lost $1.97bn in the first quarter and wrote down the value of mortgage related assets, leveraged loans and other holdings by more than $6bn
First-quarter earnings at Bank of America dropped nearly 80% to $1.2bn as the largest US bank by market value was slammed by writedowns and rising credit costs

April 16: The bank, which bought Bear Stearns earlier this year, reported profits that halved in the first quarter due to more than $5bn of writedowns and provisions

April 18: Citigroup said it lost $5.1bn in the first quarter following fresh writedowns of $13bn on troubled assets and a spike in credit costs