End of private banking boom in Asia?

Citigroup plans to double the number of wealth management clients in Asia in the next five years to one million, as the bank seeks to capitalise on an emerging middle class in the region.

Going by Citi’s track record in joining any party when it’s about to end (sub-prime lending, commerical property lending etc) our local banks who are trying to get big in privaye banking should be wary.

DBS’ private banking arm is now the eighth largest in the Asia Pacific, according to a widely followed industry ranking released on Friday (Oct 16), after assets under management (AUM) grew by by 35 per cent last year.

Private Banker International (PBI), an industry journal, said DBS’s AUM for high-net-worth clients rose 35 per cent to US$73 billion last year, helped by the Singapore lender’s acquisition of Societe Generale’s Asian private banking business.

“Other factors that contributed to (DBS’) success are a focus on digital banking, innovation, and the ability to retain customers as their individual wealth grows,” it added.

PBI had ranked DBS number nine in its previous ranking. Overall, PBI estimates that total AUM in Asia Pacific increased by 12 per cent to US$1.54 trillion last year.

(CNA sometime back)

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US marshalls target Harry’s and Ho’s banks

Citi and UBS get fined big time by US. GIC has stakes in both and both are Harry’s 30-yr banks.

Ho Ho Ho. Lucky Temasek sold out of BoA as BoA is really big time criminal.

And then there is StanChart that rolled over when a “rogue” regulator fined it once, and then another time for good measure

https://atans1.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/stanchart-troubles-never-come-singly/

https://atans1.wordpress.com/2014/09/04/stancharts-looking-dysfunctional-problem-for-ang-moh-banks/

What Citi and UBS pleaded guilty to

Below is a summary of what Citi and UBS (Harry’s “forever” investments) pleaded guilty to from NYT’s Dealbook

HEAVY FINES FOR FOREIGN EXCHANGE COLLUSION At big banks, foreign exchange trading seemed like the ideal business – relatively low risk for solid revenues. But “what seemed like the perfect business turned out to be the perfect breeding ground for crime,” Michael Corkery and Ben Protess write in DealBook. Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland pleaded guilty to a series of federal crimes over a scheme to manipulate the value of the world’s currencies, the Justice Department said Wednesday. A fifth bank, UBS, was also accused of foreign currency manipulation but was not criminally charged because it had alerted the Justice Department to possible misconduct. However, the accusations cost the bank an earlier nonprosecution agreement related to the manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor.

Prosecutors said traders at the five banks colluded from at least 2007 to 2013. “To carry out the scheme, one trader would typically build a huge position in a currency, then unload it at a crucial moment, hoping to move prices. Traders at the other banks would play along, coordinating their actions in online chat rooms,” Mr. Corkery and Mr. Protess write. The foreign exchange business may have been particularly susceptible to manipulation because it can be less profitable than other forms of trading, which increases the pressure for the traders to look for alternative ways to pad their returns, analysts said. Also, no one government agency is responsible for policing the currency market, creating a regulatory void.

The five banks, which also struck civil settlements with the Federal Reserve, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a British regulator and New York’s financial regulator, agreed to pay $5.6 billion in penalties. That is in addition to the $4.25 billion that some of these banks agreed to pay in November to many regulators. Together, the amount nearly equalsthe foreign exchange revenue generated at 10 of the world’s largest banks last year, which was $11.6 billion, according to Coalition, a financial analytics provider.

WILL PENALTIES CHANGE BANKS’ BEHAVIOR? What’s notable in the currency manipulation case is the ethos articulated by the traders involved. They called themselves “the mafia” and “the cartel,” and one Barclays trader wrote in an online chat room, “If you aint cheating, you aint trying.” In the White Collar Watch column, Peter J. Henning asks whether the guilty pleas and penalties will make a difference in how banks do business, noting that “even as penalty after penalty is paid by big banks in various cases, it seems as though the same cast of corporate characters keeps reappearing.”

He notes that guilty pleas from the big banks are “noticeably tougher” than the enforcement actions of the past, when violations drew only deferred or nonprosecution agreements. Yet the act of pleading guilty doesn’t carry the same stigma as it did in the past, Mr. Henning writes, because the government has tried to keep a guilty plea from hindering a bank’s operations. The Justice Department has also been demanding the identities of the employees behind the violations, but it’s unclear whether it will actually prosecute those people. “To change corporate culture and prevent violations from happening in the future, prosecutors may have to go beyond just demanding cooperation and threatening ever larger fines,” Mr. Henning contends.

Two of LKY’s “forever” banks are criminals

Shortly before Temasek sold, MM had said that S’pore Inc’s investments in Citi, UBS, and Merill Lynch had a time-frame of 30 yrs. Temasek held its ML investment for over a yr. GIC still owns shares in Citi (profitable), and UBS (big loss). https://atans1.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/mm-got-it-right-temasek-got-it-wrong/

UBS and Citi are still owned by GIC are now big time crooks. Recently, JP Morgan, Barclays, Citigroup and Royal Bank of Scotland – pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the US relating to the rigging of currency markets.

The four, and Switzerland’s UBS, which pleaded guilty to a different charge, agreed to pay $5.7bn (£3.6bn) in fines.

 

Derivatives: where the next crisis is coming?

Citi and Merrill Lynch used to be known as the the banks that always joined a party when it was just about to go wrong. The sub-prime crisis proved the point.

Well Merrill Lynch no longer exists but Citi survived, just. Now it’s big in derivatives, very big and GIC still has a stake in it (It’s one of LKY’s forever investments). Let’s hope it’s not curtains Citi when derivatives tank.)

CITIGROUP’S RESURGENCE Seven years after Citigroup teetered on the brink, the bank’s traders and investment bankers have come roaring back,Peter Eavis writes in DealBook. The bank’s resurgence on Wall Street, which has involved acquiring huge amounts of derivatives, comes as many of its rivals pull back in the face of new regulations intended to make the financial system safer. But even as the bank has surged ahead, it has not trumpeted its comeback. Instead, its most senior executives have largely emphasized streamlining operations that have little to do with Wall Street, like agreeing to sell a unit that focuses on subprime loans.

Citigroup’s investment bank is no longer involved in the toxic activities that were most dangerous to the bank’s health, Mr. Eavis writes. The bank also has higher levels of capital, the financial buffer that reflects a bank’s ability to absorb losses. Such steps have helped it slowly regain favor with regulators. “Still, figures for Citigroup’s Wall Street operations show a bank that is on something of a tear,” Mr. Eavis adds. The unit that encompasses the firm’s investment bank, for instance, had $1.06 trillion of assets at the end of last year, a 12 percent increase from the level in 2010.

“Perhaps most astonishing is Citigroup’s meteoric growth in derivatives, the financial contracts that allow banks and investors to place bets without actually owning an underlying stock, bond or currency,” even as new rules have persuaded many banks to cut back on the amount of derivatives they hold,” Mr. Eavis writes. Citigroup has flexed its muscles behind the scenes to protect its derivatives business from certain new rules. But the growth of Citigroup’s investment bank and its derivatives business has raised concerns among financial specialists who support tougher regulations.

(NYT’s Dealbook some months back)

Citi sees shareholders* no ak, ignores their wishes

Citigroup Makes Preparations for Profit-Sharing Plans Executives of Citigroup “stand to collect $579 million under profit-sharing plans that include the one shareholders voted against last year. The lender booked a $246 million expense in 2012 tied to the plans, adding to $285 million for the previous year and $48 million in 2010, according to regulatory filings,” Bloomberg News reports.

• BLOOMBERG NEWS

Charles Peabody, an analyst with Portales Partners LLC in New York, said the payouts are difficult to justify given last year’s shareholder rejection. Peabody, who told clients in a 2011 note that he was “dismayed” by the lack of stringent financial thresholds in that year’s plan, said today that Citigroup hasn’t done enough to tie pay to performance.

“The compensation plan was a travesty,” said Peabody, who has an underperform rating on the shares. “Citi’s board and management team continue to make a mockery of shareholder, political and regulatory demands that compensation reflect performance.” …The profit-sharing payouts are on top of annual salaries and bonuses granted to senior executives …

… Citigroup’s use of pretax profit to grant awards “sets the bar too low,” said Hodgson, the compensation analyst. “They’re not looking at anything else apart from pretax income, which is just not a good enough measure of a bank’s performance.”

*GIC still has a slug of Citi

Citi: Last dog in the race

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-18/a-daunting-to-do-list-for-citigroups-new-ceo#p1

And we own a big chunk of it still. ((((((

FT’s banking editor suggested that it could be split five ways: “into an equity and fixed-income trading entity; an advisory platform; a US retail bank network; a global trade finance shop; and an emerging markets retail bank.” [This para added at 6.07am on day of publication.]

Update on Citi: New Citi, old Citi

As GIC still has a loss position in Citi (though it has realised profits to offset the loss, unlike in UBS), tot I’d update readers

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/the-new-citigroup-isnt-your-fathers-citicorp/?nl=business&emc=edit_dlbkam_20120823

“30-yr” GIC investment Citi almost junk

15 major banks* (including another GIC investment UBS)  were hit with credit downgrades on Thursday that could do more damage to their profitability, credit worthiness and further unsettle equity markets.

The credit agency, Moody’s Investors Service, which warned banks in February that a downgrade was possible, cut the credit scores of banks to new lows to reflect new risks that the industry has encountered since the financial crisis.

Citigroup was among the hardest hit. After the downgrades, the bank stands barely above the minimum for an investment grade rating, a sign of the difficult business conditions it faces.

Banks have struggled to improve their profits against the backdrop of the European sovereign debt crisis, a weak American economy and new regulations. The downgrades may amplify their problems. With lower ratings, creditors could charge the banks more on their loans. Big clients may also move their business to less-risky companies, further affecting earnings.

Wonder if LKY, who made the 30-yr comment, has repented making the comment?

Update

Citi bitches: Citi said in a statement that Moody’s approach “fails to recognize Citi’s transformation over the past several years,” adding that “Citi strongly disagrees with Moody’s analysis of the banking industry and firmly believes its downgrade of Citi is arbitrary and completely unwarranted.”

But more woes: Citigroup seen as vulnerable to emerging markets’ currency movements Charles Peabody, an analyst for Portales Partners, estimated on “Bloomberg Surveillance” that $3 billion to $5 billion of Citigroup’s book value was vulnerable to changes in the value of the Mexican peso and the Brazilian real http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-20/citigroup-may-take-5-billion-hit-on-forex-peabody-says.html

Good news: It claims it is boosting revenue at its corporate and investment banking unit in with rising fees from debt underwriting and cash management as initial public offerings shrink http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-18/citigroup-asia-fees-rising-as-debt-sales-counter-equity-slowdown.html.

—–

*Bank of America, Citigroup Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, UBS, HSBC, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, Société Générale, Royal Bank of Canada, and Royal Bank of Scotland.

Why our local banks shld stop wasting resources on China proper

(Or “Why Temasek’s big bet on Chinese banks makes sense“)

DBS is the 6th largest foreign bank in China proper. It has a strategy of expansion into China. So have UOB and OCBC.

Well, its a tough biz to be in. Non-Chinese banks have only 2% market share. Even HSBC, StanChart and Citi have problems http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-04/china-wall-hit-by-global-banks-with-2-market-share.html

DBS, OCBC and UOB shld juz not bother abt China.

Role Reversal for Bank of America and Citigroup

Going into the earnings season, these two big banks have reversed roles: Bank of America, which last year faced concerns about its health, has rallied this year, while Citigroup now confronts doubts.

NEW YORK TIMES

For the record:

— Temasek dumped its stake in BoA in 2009 when hedgies were buying, losing, it is estimated US$4.6bn;

— GIC is now sitting on paper losses on its remaining stake in Citi (stake was profitable last July, see link below); and

— one LKY said in 2008 that these (and UBS, where GIC still has unrealised losses) were beyond long-term investments. There were 30-year investments.

Wall St’s finest after the collapse of Bear

Citigroup’s down 82%

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/how-wall-street-has-fared-after-bears-fall/?nl=business&emc=edit_dlbkpm_20120316

Citi cont’d

Citigroup’s CEO Vikram Pandit said the bank still has capacity to return more capital to shareholders and will seek clearance for a “meaningful” payout after the Federal Reserve rejected an initial plan, the wires report. The Fed allowed f\JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo to increase their payouts.

Despite this failure to payout more to shareholders, Vikram S. Pandit could see a total of US$53 million in compensation for 2011, from his yearly pay combined with a multi-year retention package, Bloomberg News reports, citing filings and an analyst’s estimate. Could remind TOC and TRE readers or their usual writers of the transport and HDB ministers who “retired” after failing to anticipate the problems that increased FTs would cause in their portfolios and of “50-year flood” Yacoob who got moved to MICA after Orchard Rd was hit by two such floods in two months in 2010.

Related post: https://atans1.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/citi-falls-fed-test-one-of-only-four-that-failed/

Citi falls Fed test: one of only four that failed

Four US financial institutions, including Citigroup, have failed stress tests designed to show they could withstand a financial shock. The Federal Reserve said Citi, SunTrust, Ally Financial and MetLife failed to show they have enough capital to survive another serious downturn.

Citigroup is the third-largest US bank. The majority of the 19 tested passed.

All those tested are in a much stronger position than they were after the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed added.The Fed tested the banks’ ability to withstand a similar crisis that triggered a rise in unemployment to 13%, a 50% fall in share prices and a 21% drop in house prices. Their strength is assessed by the amount of “buffer” best-quality assets, known as Tier 1 capital, they would hold if such conditions occurred. The regulator said Citigroup had a Tier 1 capital ratio of 4.9%.

Reminder, GIC still has a substantial stake in Citi. SIGH.

Update at 6.15pm on 14 March 2012: Despite failing the test, Vikram S. Pandit, Citigroup’s chief executive, could see a total of US$53 million in compensation for 2011, from his yearly pay combined with a multi-year retention package, Bloomberg News reports, citing filings and an analyst’s estimate.

Citigroup: Its day is coming

 UBS and Citigroup are stocks that the SDP, and KennethJ use to beat up GIC (and its then executive director) regularly

This explains why Citigroup might be the stock to own.

 Citi’s a strange creature. It’s dysfunctional. Its never missed a major financial crisis (loans to the developing world and US property loans in the late 1970s and 1980s; LBO loans in the late 1980s; dotcom stock recommendations in the late 1990s; and sub-prime mortgages recently). But at the operational level, it produces good managers who are in demand when it comes to running medium-sized banks in developing countries. The CEOs of DBS and OCBC were from Citi, as was  the CEO of RHB Babk.

Ghosts haunting Citigroup this Christmas

(Another piece in an occasional series wondering why anyone would want to be a Citi customer. No, never had any account with Citi, nor ever sought one.)

1. Another soured deal that it did with a wealthy client

Saudi businessman Ghazi Abbar, who claims in an affidavit he lost $383 million of his family’s fortune on investments with Citigroup Inc., was sold one of the transactions even though the bank questioned his ability to properly manage them, according to an internal memo.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-30/citigroup-saudi-deal-haunts-pandit-as-family-claims-383-million-wipeout.html

2. Bloomberg reports, Part of the New York-based bank’s retail business will be suspended for 30 days by the Japanese Financial Services Agency, said one of the people, who asked not to be named because the matter isn’t yet public. Citigroup’s trading unit will be suspended from selling products tied to interest rates for 10 days and its head, Brian McCappin, may resign, the person said.

Citigroup Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit is trying to restore the bank’s reputation in Japan. Regulators punished the company twice in seven years after finding fault with its private-banking operation and a lack of internal controls.

The trading unit will be banned from selling certain products in Japan tied to the London and Tokyo interbank offered rates, or Libor and Tibor, the person said. These are rates at which banks are willing to lend money to each other. Citigroup employees tried to improperly influence Tibor to the firm’s advantage, two people familiar with the matter said earlier this month.

Related posts

https://atans1.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/behind-yr-payments-to-citi/

https://atans1.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/citi-owe-it-money/

https://atans1.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/citigroup-wins-life-or-death-fraud-case/

https://atans1.wordpress.com/2011/08/06/why-do-people-like-being-citi-clients/

Banks’ Alice-in-Wonderland Accounting

The problem with a bank’s balance sheet is that on the left side nothing’s right and on the right side nothing’s left.

Think Lehman’s and Dexia’s balance sheets. One day AAA, six months’s later rubbish. That fast leh?

Profit and loss accounts are just as rubbishy. Recently UBS’s third quater profit fell to 1.02 billion Swiss francs (US$1.2 billion) in the three months ended Sept. 30 from 1.66 billion francs in the period a year earlier. The trading loss of  1.85bn Swiss francs (alleged caused by a rogue trader) and charges linked to a cost-cutting plan were partly offset by an accounting gain on the bank’s own credit of 1.8 billion francs and the sale of some investments.

Now this accounting treatment was not not only used by UBS. According to the FT’s Lex, four-fifths of the US$16bn net profits  in the latest announced results of (BoA, Citi, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs came from using used the same accounting treatment of the banks’ own debts.

Lex describes the accounting treament thus: ” Try this on your credit card company: your creditworthiness has weakened, so you write down the value of what you owe them to reflect the greater riskthat you will not pay it back and credit the difference to your personal account. That is what exactly accounting allows”.

UBS: What else can go wrong?

Readers will know by now that UBS, where GIC is a major long-term (and suffering)  investor, is planning to reduce the scale of its investment banking operations, the source of its on-going problems since 2007.

But they may not know “What they are trying to do has never been done before,” Christopher Wheeler, an analyst at Mediobanca, said. “They want to shrink the investment bank by choice, which means unwinding positions without loss and running down their books while keeping the morale among staff, and it’s unclear who’s running the shop.”

And don’t be fooled by its latest results. Despite being hit by a 1.85bn-franc loss from deals made by an alleged rogue trader, it just made  a better-than-expected third-quarter net profit of 1bn Swiss francs (US$1.1bn).

The loss was almost entirely offset by a 1.77bn-franc accounting gain that came from changes to the value of the bank’s own debt. One of these days, I’ll blog on the Alice-in-Wonderland accounting that allows this type of gain to materialise. According to the FT’s Lex, four-fifths of the US$16bn net profits  in the latest announced results of (BoA, Citi, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs came from using used the same accounting treatment of the banks’ own debts.

GIC: Loss of S$5.2bn on combined UBS and Citi investments

(Note that on 27 July 2011 at 8.20am, I revised the article)

Using BT’s numbers that appeared in BT today, I calculated that GIC has a book loss of S$8.4bn on UBS, a profit of S$1.9bn on Citi and a paper profit of S$1.3bn. So this adventure in distress investing has not paid off yet. The net book loss is S$5.2bn.

GIC owns 245.48 million UBS shares, or a stake of 6.41 per cent in the bank, UBS’s latest annual report shows. That stake would be worth some 3.41 billion francs, at UBS’s share price of 13.88 francs at 9.30pm Singapore time yesterday. Even after including the 1.98 billion in coupon payments that GIC received in the first two years of its investment in UBS, its paper loss is about 5.6 billion francs*, or 51 per cent of the original 11 billion francs.

By contrast, its current stake in Citi is showing a large paper gain.

After selling half its original stake in Citi for a profit of US$1.6 billion** in September 2009, GIC still owns 3.86 per cent of the bank’s ordinary equity – or about 112.095 million shares.

The average cost of those shares was US$29.50 each – after adjusting for a reverse split of Citi shares in May that merged every 10 of its shares into one share – based on information provided by GIC in September 2009.

At yesterday’s opening price of US$39.69 for Citi shares in New York, the shares would be worth about US$4.45 billion, compared to the US$3.31 billion cost of acquiring them, giving GIC a paper profit of US$1.14 billion***, or some 34 per cent.

(*S$8.4bn, **S$1.9bn, ***S$1.3bn)

Citi: Owe it money?

A customer, a politician, who owed 68 million rupiah on his Citigold card, died on March 29 while meeting with bank staff, Gatot Eddy Pramono, head of the South Jakarta Police District. said. Four people are suspected of being involved in the death, he said, Bloomberg reports.

FT reports that three external debt collectors  working for Citi have been detained, and face possible murder charges.

An internal investigation into the death didn’t reveal any physical violence, Citigroup’s Mukhtar said April 5. The bank had been working with the client and had offered to waive as much as 40 percent of the principal amount, he said, Bloomberg reported.

Can you trust Citi?

Remember JR from Dallas?

He recently won US$11.1m++ from Citi. The arbitrator held that Citi’s broking arm had breached its fiduciary duty to him. This sum includes US$10m in puntitive damages.

And Terra Firma (a British private equity firm), is suing Citigroup over its disputed take- over of EMI for £4.2bn on the eve of the credit crunch. It is demanding compensation for EMI’s accumulated losses of £1.75bn and a punitive sum worth three times that figure, which would give TF £7bn.

The crux of Guy Hand’s case is that his private equity firm Terra Firma was allegedly tricked into buying EMI in 2007 by leading Citigroup financial adviser David Wormsley. Hands alleges that Wormsley tried to force up the price during the sale by telling him that another bidder … was still in the running. Guardian

And in 2008 in S’pore, Singapore Tycoon Oei Hong Leong, who was widely dubbed “The Man with the Midas Touch,” sued Citigroup for negligence and misrepresentation after he lost $1billion on foreign exchange and U.S. Treasury bond transactions last year.

The matter was settled out of court, in 2009.

Remember “The Citi never sleeps”?  Well so did the Eye of Sauron, the master of the orcs and other baddies  in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

DBS:Takeover target?

Could DBS be a takeover target for StanChart? The latter has just launched a 3.2bn sterling rights issue which would make it one of the top 20 banks by market cap. Temasek would surely be glad that one of  its best performing investments relieves it of a dog of an investment. StanChart is itself the subject of talk that JPMorgan wants it.https://atans1.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/stanchart-a-takeover-target/

The only advantage for StanChart to own DBS is that it will finally have a market where it is the dominant player. It has never had a market where it dominated, unlike HSBC which parlayed its dominance in HK into being a global player.

As to DBS’s other biz, they are dross compared to similar biz owned by StanChart.

BTW, DBS is late to another party.

In June DBS Group annced that it was looking looking to expand its Global Transaction Services (GTS) biz by doubling its current annual revenue of S$800 million in less than three years.

The newly appointed, Thomas J McCabe, managing director of Global Transaction Services, said the expansion will be carried out in a two-pronged approach.

This involves both building on its current Internet banking platform for its corporate clients and grooming GTS staff to meet their clients’ growing needs.

The bank is investing S$9 million on a new technology platform, including smartphone applications, to make its Internet banking service more functional.

The problem is that this biz which covers such services as corporate cash management, foreign exchange, trade finance, global custody and hedge-fund administration, is the new in-thing for much bigger and experienced banks because it provides steady income and is not too capital-intensive,. Some banks have moved investment bankers into this dull biz.

Looks like DBS has not changed, moving late into a fashionable biz where it has no special expertise. BTW Merrill Lynch and Citi had a reputation of moving late into biz where they had no special skills. Subprime is a classic example. Here’s an article on Citi’s latest possible folly: spending on new biz. Remember many of DBS’s FTs are ex- Citibankers, as is OCBC’s CEO. Only UOB is run by a true-blue S’porean.

GIC’s loss on UBS and Citi can fund 13 YOGs

The unrealised loss is S$5.5bn or 28.8% of the total investment in both banks. (S$18.1bn). This can fund slightly more than 13 of VB’s Kiddie Games and buy the poor (he berates) all the hawker and restaurant meals (sharks’ fin combs included) they will ever.

At last Friday’s closing price of US$3.90, Citi’s shares would be worth about US$4.4 bn, compared to the US$3.3 bn (S$4.3bn) cost. This gives  GIC a paper profit of US$1.1 billion (S$1.5bn). Gd job GIC. And I didn’t take into account the profit it made selling part of its stake.

But GIC’s investment of 11 bn Swiss francs (originally convertible notes issued by UBS) or S$14.8bn is showing an unrealised loss of 4.9 bn francs (S$6.6 bn) based on last Friday’s closing price, even taking into the 2 bn francs it received in interest.

GIC now owns 3.8% of Citi’s common stock and 6.4% of UBS’s common stock, GIC said at a briefing on its latest annual report on Tuesday.

GIC: a problem at Citi

Some analysts and accounting experts (among the latter Lynn Turner), a former chief accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission,  say Citi must set aside funds to cover US$50bn of deferred taxes.

These assets  are important to Citi. At the end of the second quarter, deferred tax assets made up more than a third of Citi’s tangible equity. So if he had to set aside funds, this would reduce its capitalratios and weaken its balance sheet.

To avoid setting aside funds, Citi has to be confident it will earn US$99bn in taxable income during the next two decades. It says it can.

However as  its pre-tax losses in 2008 and 2009 topped US$60bn, these critics ask why it should be trusted.  They have a point, while between 2002-2006 period Citi had annual pre-tax profits of at least US$20bn, this got wiped out by the recent losses.

Err so will this “30-yr” investment be around in 30 yrs time, let alone make money for GIC, as MM predicted? Remember Temasek cut loss on its Merrill Lynch investment, after doubling down, and juz before market turned.

A problem with int’l trade credit, again?

I came across the following extract from a BBC Online article. The writer, “Laura” works in a British commercial bank.

If what she says applies in places like S’pore, HK, USA etc, we could see a second dip soon.    Note after the collapse of Lehman, int’l trade almost stopped for a few months because banks stopped accepting letters of credit from banks that they thought could collapse.

“I have had a growing worry over international finance over the last few months. Since the crunch started, confidence in other banks has been knocked. The most obvious manifestation of this was LIBOR being thrown out of kilter. Whilst this has now settled it only shows the picture of banks operating in the UK. What can’t be seen easily is the reduction or extinction of the willingness of banks to accept letters of credit from foreign banks which many customers who export or who have sister companies abroad need to trade round the world.

‘There are some countries now which have no banks which UK organisations are happy to accept a letter of credit from. Letters of credit are, in simplistic terms, one bank saying our customer is good for the money. This letter says we guarantee that so please let them have the goods and pay after delivery. If your customer then doesn’t pay you, their bank has to honour the letter of credit they approved. If your bank doesn’t have faith that they would honour that then the whole system falls down. Which it virtually has.

‘This situation hasn’t notably improved for some countries and I think this is a real threat to economic growth to UK Plc next year, as low exchange rates should mean good times for exporters. If they can’t get funding, however they won’t be able to capitalise on this.”

But banks that have global networks and strong franchises in trade financing like HSBC (I got shares here), Citi (after US government bailout) and Standard Chartered are minting money.

Where value investing can go wrong

“A study by Standard & Poor’s, one of the world’s leading credit rating agencies, has raised questions over the financial strength of some of the biggest banks ahead of new rules that could require them to raise more funds.

‘The analysis by S&P showed that HSBC is the best capitalised bank in the world, while Switzerland’s UBS, Citigroup of the US and several of Japan’s biggest banks are among the weakest.”: an excerpt from the FT.

No the purpose is not to show that highly paid managers at GIC goffed, or how smart I am. I have been a shareholder of HSBC since the 1980s. Even during Green’s (Christian + McKinsey, a lethal combination that always leads to problems) tenure as CEO, I kept the faith.

Now that the CEO is a man who joined the bank as an International Officer from a minor public school with I think A-levels, and he is basing himself in HK, one can only expect the return to the values that made HSBC great during the tenures of Sandberg, Purvis and Bond. Oh Purvis won the Military Cross in Korea, when he disobeyed orders to withdraw. He claimed he couldn’t hear the radio messge.

Sorry I am digressing. When Temasek bought into Merrill Lynch and Barclays and  GIC into UBS and Citi, I realised that they were buying into highly efficient banking machines. There was just enough capital for regulatory reasons and to provide a buffer for some things going wrong.  They needed a bit more cushion and GIC, Temasek were providing it.  Risky but history was on their side.

When the world recovered from the credit crunch of 2006, 2007, GIC and Temasek would reap the rewards of these finely tuned cash machines. They were the equivalent of the best of the best F1 cars.  I thought we had smart boys and gals. And that the risk would pay off.

But then came Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers and AIG, and the rules changed. The winners were the better capitalised banks. If HSBC had as little capital as Citi, I’d be a poor man. The amounts it had to write-off on US sub prime would have shmed Citi. But it had capital.

So value investing doesn’t always pay off.