Citi Pays $3.5 Billion To Keep Its Employees Out Of Jail For Yet Another Quarter

Moments after Bank of America reported at today's Goldman financial conference that its Q4 trading revenues would be down both Q/Q and Y/Y, it was Citi's turn to warn that the current quarter will be the latest disaster in a long series of revenue disasters, with Q4 revenue said to drop 5% from a year ago, however, despite the drop, Citi would still see a "marginally profitable" quarter. Supposedly this means that a few hundred million shares of stock will have to be repurchased to give the optics that EPS is rising even as revenues continue to drop.

That was to be expected in a financially-engineered, centrally-planned world in which there is no institutional volume left, and all the rigged market levitation takes place on the back of negligible volumes by HFT algos, as well as stock buyback VWAP orders.

What, however, was a surprise, is that alongside the revenue warnings, Citi's CEO Corbat also announced yet another $2.7 billion in legal, related charges in 4Q, as well as another $800 million in repositioning expenses.

This simply means that for yet another quarter Citi will be charged with billions in recurring, non-one time "one-time, non-recurring" charges which will be dutifully added back to non-GAAP EPS by analysts at all the other banks (whose criminal employers are now engaged in the same racket with the US government).

But what it really means is that it cost Citi some $3.5 billion to keep its employees out of jail for yet another 3 months.

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