Mergers & Acquisitions
Citigroup Finally Unravels...But Not Before Taxpayers Take $45 Billion Hit
February 18, 2009
The nation's largest commercial banks have been at the epicenter of the credit crisis. Last month, the most troubled of these banks, New York-based Citigroup, announced it was splitting apart into two segments basically undoing the mammoth merger of a decade ago. John Reed, former Citicorp CEO, admits merger was "a mistake."
On April 6, 1998, New York-based Citicorp and Travelers Group announced they were merging in an $82.9 billion deal which at the time was the largest in U.S. history. The new financial behemoth which brazenly combined banking with brokerage and investment services and insurance with assets of $700 billion was called Citigroup.