Citigroup profits surged in the second quarter, smashing Wall Street estimates and sending shares higher before the market's open, even though the bank's revenue was essentially flat from the previous year.
Citigroup's second-quarter net income rose 22 percent to $3.3 billion as the bank lost less money on bad loans. Earnings per share came in at $1.09, topping estimates of 96 cents a share. A year ago, the company earned 90 cents a share.
Shares gained 3 percent in premarket trading.
The financial services group reported $16.3 billion in revenue, slightly lower than the previous year due to a revenue drop at Citi Holdings, the unit devoted to ridding the company of its toxic assets.
According to Thomson Reuters, analysts expected Citigroup to earn 96 cents a share on revenue of $1.98 billion.
It was the sixth consecutive quarterly profit for Citigroup, which needed $45 billion in U.S. bailouts to survive the financial crisis.
"Revenues were higher than we expected. The actual reserve release came in below expectations," Anthony Polini, analyst at Raymond James, told CNBC. "So the quality of earnings given a little lower tax rate seems to be better than the prior quarter."
Profit growth had come mainly from the bank setting aside less money to cover bad loans, which is not a source of profits long term.
Since December, when the U.S. government sold off the last of its common share stake in Citigroup, Chief Executive Vikram Pandit has been trying to show investors that the bank can move beyond recovery to growth.
"Citi achieved another solid quarter of operating performance as we continue to execute our strategy," Pandit said in a statement.
Boosting business has been difficult this year for most US banks, as weak fixed-income trading and market volatility weighed heavily on Citigroup and its main rivals.
JPMorgan Chase said on Thursday that bond trading revenue fell in the second quarter, though the drop-off was not as bad as some investors had feared.
The two earnings beats come as financials have vastly underperformed the rest of the market through the year and expectations have been low.
"There's got to be a crowded trade on the upside down the road," Polini said in general of the banks, on which he has a strong buy rating. "They're being killed not by the fundamental outlook but by the regulatory, political and macro uncertainty. If you believe those clouds will thin these are great buying opportunities."
This year, Pandit has tried to rebuild Citigroup's investment bank, which lost talent, business and reputation during the crisis. Since taking over the bank at the start of the crisis, he has shed assets and tried to refocus Citigroup on its main banking businesses.
This spring Citigroup reinstated a nominal dividend, after shrinking its outstanding share count with the 1-for-10 reverse split.
Investors remain skeptical that the bank's recovery is completely over.
Citigroup's shares have fallen more than 13 percent since the split took effect, and closed down 1.1 percent at $39.02 on Thursday.
© 2011 CNBC.com
Layoff season has begun and it’s no secret that there’s more coming. And with the shrinking of the financial industry generally, some of you are probably going to have to think about transitioning to a new industry. One where you can use your above-average interpersonal skills, process management expertise, knowledge of cash flow modeling, and I don’t know, I’m going to say maybe your familiarity with what goes on in the back room at New York Dolls.
Fortunately JobSerf.com has a solution: hire a team of workers in Visakhapatnam, India, to send your resume to porn businesses looking to beef up their executive management teams.
From the WSJ:
When JobSerf six years ago first tested its services with a few U.S. executive clients, its Indian workers applied on their behalf to a number of adult-entertainment companies.
“They were porn magnets,” says Mr. Martin. “They’d apply to CEO and CFO jobs at every porn outfit out there,” says Mr. Martin.”
Or if you have a buddy at the SEC maybe you could have him help with your search.
The small city of Central Falls, R.I., appears to be headed for a rare municipal bankruptcy filing, and state officials are rushing to keep its woes from overwhelming the struggling state.
The impoverished city, operating under a receiver for a year, has promised $80 million worth of retirement benefits to 214 police officers and firefighters, far more than it can afford. Those workers’ pension fund will probably run out of money in October, giving Central Falls the distinction of becoming the second municipality in the United States to exhaust its pension fund, after Prichard, Ala.
“Time is running out,” warns Robert G. Flanders, the state-appointed receiver, who recently closed the public library and a community center to save money. He has no power to cancel the city’s contracts with workers, so instead he has begun approaching retired police officers and firefighters with what he describes as “the Big Ask”: will they voluntarily accept smaller benefits in the name of saving Central Falls?
Some of the retirees are in their 90s, and Central Falls, like many American cities, has not placed its police and firefighters in Social Security. Many have no other benefits to fall back on.
State lawmakers are trying to contain the damage, mindful that it would be a bad time for any state to seek help in Washington. Last month they rescinded an offer of state aid to Central Falls, just after Moody’s downgraded the city’s credit to “possibility of default.”
But the state still has risks related to the woes of its municipalities, risks that have gone largely unnoticed because it is not as big as, say, Illinois and California. Several other Rhode Island cities are sinking under big debt burdens. Even Providence, the capital, risks running out of cash in September, according to its auditor, and if it scrapes by until October, it must then come up with $60 million for its own municipal pension plan.
Some analysts fear that a Central Falls bankruptcy, and a whiff of other problems out there, could scare nervous investors away from bonds issued by Rhode Island’s other municipalities, perhaps setting off a chain reaction that could push the state itself to the brink. There is a precedent: the last American state to default on its bonds, Arkansas in 1933, got in over its head by trying to help struggling municipalities.
More recently, when local governments have veered toward bankruptcy—Orange County, Calif., in 1994; Cleveland in 1978—neighboring municipalities have found it harder to sell their own debt. During the New York City fiscal crisis of 1975, New Jersey suddenly found its bonds harder to sell.
“That type of contagion is what you’re trying to avoid,” said James E. Spiotto, a bankruptcy specialist at the law firm Chapman & Cutler, who is not involved in Rhode Island’s problems.
Rhode Island has an investment-grade credit rating, but it is in no position to bail out a string of teetering cities, or take over their shaky local pension funds the way the federal government does when some companies go bankrupt. The state treasurer, Gina M. Raimondo, says Rhode Island must first stabilize its own pension fund, which continues to require more and more cash each year, despite four overhauls since 2005 that were supposed to get the cost under control. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating. If the state turns out to have understated its commitments, it could deliver a new jolt to bond markets still nervous after two traumatic years.
Lawmakers in Rhode Island are trying to reassure investors. On July 1 they passed a law giving certain bonds, known as general obligations, legal priority over all other payments that municipalities must make, including retirement benefits. The measure, awaiting Gov. Lincoln Chafee’s signature, also requires Rhode Island’s cities, towns and districts to dedicate their general revenue to paying bondholders first, and to raise property taxes as much as necessary to make all payments to bondholders on time.
It gives less secure types of bonds priority, too, and makes local officials personally liable for any losses they cause by failing to comply with the new requirements.
When the city of Vallejo, Calif., declared bankruptcy in 2008, no one thought it would ripple out over the whole state. Partly that’s because California has shock absorbers: laws on the books that assure bondholders they will be paid and a big, diverse state economy that could bail out a distressed city if need be.
Rhode Island is different. There are only 39 cities and towns in the state, so one troubled city cannot easily fade into the background. And there is not just one troubled city. Recent tests found one in four in some degree of distress.
A startling number have stumbled by trying to operate their own tiny pension funds for selected groups of workers, rather than participating in a state-run pension system for municipalities. There are 36 of these local pension funds, and 23 have been designated at risk, with Central Falls the most endangered. A legislative report found that eliminating all their shortfalls would cost more than the total statewide property tax levy.
In Central Falls, the receiver looked into whether the state-run pension system for municipalities could take over the local plan, but found that a radical restructuring would have to come first.
The city, just north of Providence, is small and poor, but over the years it has promised police officers and firefighters retirement benefits like those offered in big, rich states like California and New York. These uniformed workers can retire after just 20 years of service, receive free health care in retirement, and qualify for full disability pensions when only partly disabled.
Just over one square mile, Central Falls has a tightly packed population, filled mostly with immigrant families, that struggles on a median household income of less than $33,520 a year, according to the Census Bureau’s 2005-9 American Community Survey. The typical single-family house, after a recent revaluation, is worth about $130,000. It is hard to see how anyone thought such an impoverished tax base could come up with an additional $80 million for retirement benefits. If the city were contributing the recommended amount to the plan each year, it would take 57 percent of local property tax revenue.
Daniel L. Beardsley Jr., executive director of the Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns, said it was not the city’s idea. Other states limit what can be decided in collective bargaining, but Rhode Island’s law says that for police and firefighters, “wages, hours and any and all terms or conditions of employment” are subject to negotiation.
“That means even the length of a mustache,” said Mr. Beardsley, who over many years has represented Central Falls and other municipalities in contract negotiations. Talks broke down more often than not, he said, and then the same state law called for binding arbitration, which for many years was a clubby process that emphasized comparable benefits all across the state more than any city’s ability to pay.
“It was a domino effect,” he said, leaving Rhode Island with the nation’s highest per capita spending for fire services and sixth-highest for policing. (The binding arbitration law does not apply to public workers other than police officers and firefighters in the state, although some want it extended to teachers.)
Central Falls is already spending about a fourth of its budget on employee benefits, and that will rise sharply when the pension fund is exhausted. Mike Andrews, president of the local firefighters’ union, said about one in four of his men now qualified for retirement, but were afraid to retire, concerned that their pensions would be chopped in bankruptcy.
“We’re always willing to come to the table and try to work something out,” he said. “We want to get this corrected as much as anyone, because if it doesn’t get corrected, we suffer.”
This story originally appeared in The New York Times
Networking equipment company Cisco Systems could eliminate as many as 10,000 jobs, or about 14 percent of its workforce, to revive profit growth, Bloomberg said, citing two people familiar with the matter.
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| Cisco Inc |
As many as 7,000 jobs would be eliminated by the end of August, the people told the agency.
Cisco is also providing early-retirement packages to about 3,000 workers who took buyouts, according to Bloomberg.
Early on Monday, Reuters reported that Cisco may slash about 5,000 jobs to meet Chief Executive John Chambers' goal of slashing costs by $1 billion. Reuters had cited Gleacher & Co analyst Brian Marshall.
"As we announced on our Q3 earnings call, Cisco will take out $1 billion in costs from our FY 12 expense run-rate as part of our efforts to streamline company operations, including a planned reduction in workforce. We will provide additional detail on the cost reductions, including layoffs, on our next earnings call on Aug 11," Cisco spokeswoman Karen Tillman told CNBC.
Cisco shares closed down about 2 percent at $15.43, in a market that was broadly lower due to concerns about the U.S. budget talks and the euro zone debt crisis.
Chambers, who is set to speak at a company event in Las Vegas on Tuesday, is working to turn around the Silicon Valley bellwether.
He has said the company's next fiscal year starting in August would not live up to the company's previous growth expectations.
Marshall's estimate for job cuts at Cisco is higher than the previous forecasts of up to 4,000 jobs that are in danger of being eliminated.
The pending job cuts "will help right the ship" and achieve a reduction in operating expenses by about $1 billion annually, Marshall said in a note to clients.
Cisco would also need to lower its long-term revenue growth target to about 10 percent from a forecast of 12 percent to 17 percent, Marshall said. Cisco's revenue has increased 11 percent over the past five calendar years.
Cisco warned in May that it planned to trim its workforce as part of a plan to cut some $1 billion in costs from its annual budget but did not disclose how many jobs would be cut.
Sachin Tendulkar and opener Virender Sehwag are among the list of players nominated for an online poll to select the greatest team of all-time.
The poll is being conducted on the occasion of Test cricket's 2,000th match.
The historic match will take place between India and England at Lord's from July 21 to 25, and the ICC has called on supporters from across the globe to select the greatest team of all-time.
While Sehwag has found a place in the list of openers, which also has the likes of former India skipper Sunil Gavaskar, Tendulkar has been short-listed for the middle-order batsman's slot.
However, no Indian player has found a place in the shortlist for the slot of wicketkeepers and fast bowlers, while the 1983 World Cup winning Indian team captain Kapil Dev is in the reckoning as an all-rounder.
Legendary Bishan Singh Bedi and Anil Kumble have been shortlisted for the spinner's role in the dream team.
Sir Donald Bradman and West Indian great Viv Richards are in the fray for the middle-order's slot, while attacking wicketkeeper batsman Adam Gilchrist is pitted against South Africa's Mark Boucher for the stumper's position.
Legendary West Indian pacers Malcolm Marshall and Michael Holding and Pakistani great Wasim Akram have been shortlisted in the bowler's category alongside champion spinner Shane Warne.
The ICC's website is seeking votes from the fans and cricket lovers across the world to pick the dream Test team from a shortlist of 60 players split into five categories.
The fans will be asked to pick two opening batsmen, three middle-order batsmen, a wicketkeeper, three fast bowlers and one spinner.
The public vote on ICC's website closes in two days' time with results set to be announced the week before the 2,000th Test.
"With the 2,000th Test coming up it is appropriate to remember some of the great players through the ages that have thrilled audiences and inspired us all," ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat said in a statement.
"With so many legends of the game to choose from, it is a very difficult task and I'm sure one that will lead to plenty of fond recollection and great debate.
"Test cricket is the pinnacle format of our great sport and it is important we continue to protect and promote it so that it grows even stronger over the next 2,000 matches."
The shortlist for The Dream Team:
Opening batsmen: Geoffrey Boycott, Sunil Gavaskar, Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Jack Hobbs, Len Hutton, Hanif Mohammad, Virender Sehwag, Herbert Sutcliffe, Victor Trumper.
Middle-order batsmen: Don Bradman, Greg Chappell, Wally Hammond, George Headley, Brian Lara, Javed Miandad, Graeme Pollock, Ricky Ponting, Viv Richards, Sachin Tendulkar.
All-rounder: Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, Aubrey Faulkner, Richard Hadlee, Jacques Kallis, Imran Khan, Keith Miller, Wilfred Rhodes, Gary Sobers, Frank Worrell.
Wicketkeepers: Les Ames, Mark Boucher, Jeff Dujon, Godfrey Evans, Andy Flower, Adam Gilchrist, Alan Knott, Rod Marsh, Clyde Walcott, Wasim Bari.
Fast bowlers: Curtley Ambrose, Sydney Barnes, Michael Holding, Dennis Lillee, Ray Lindwall, Malcolm Marshall, Glenn McGrath, Fred Trueman, Courtney Walsh, Wasim Akram.
Spinners: Bishen Bedi, Richie Benaud, Lance Gibbs, Clarrie Grimmett, Jim Laker, Anil Kumble, Muttiah Muralitharan, Bill O'Reilly, Derek Underwood, Shane Warne.
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Hackers have disclosed a bug in software from Apple that security experts said could be exploited by criminals looking to gain remote control over iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices.
The security flaw in Apple's iOS operating system came to light on Wednesday as the website www.jailbreakme.com released code that Apple customers can use to modify the iOS operating system through a process known as "jail breaking."
Some Apple customers choose to jail break their devices so they can download and run applications that are not approved by Apple or use iPhone phones on networks of carriers that are not approved by Apple.
Security experts warned that criminal hackers could download that code, reverse engineer it to identify a hole in iOS security and build a piece of malicious software within a few days.
"If you are a malicious attacker, it is fairly doable," said Patrik Runald, a senior researcher with the Internet security firm Websense.
Apple has yet to release an update to iOS that protects customers against malicious software that exploits the flaw.
Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said the company was aware of the problem.
"We are developing a fix that will be available to customers in an upcoming software update," Muller said.
Apple has long been vocal against jail breaking, which if done voids the warranty on its devices.
Any security flaw in iOS software — which runs Apple's iPhone, iPad tablet and iPod Touch — has the potential to affect millions of devices that are at the core of Apple's business.
Apple has sold 25 million iPads since it launched last year. The company sold over 18 million of its popular iPhones in just the first three months of the year.
Hackers can exploit the iOS vulnerability by creating a malicious PDF document file. It would infect Apple devices when users attempt to open that document, according to Runald.
Once the device is infected, hackers could "do anything they want," Runald said. That includes stealing passwords, documents and emails.
Comex, a 19-year-old hacker from New York State who developed the jail-breaking tool, said that Apple might be able to patch the software before criminal hackers develop software that exploits the bug.
Last time he put out a version of his jailbreaking software, Apple was able to issue a patch before anybody exploited the bug for malicious purposes.
He said that Apple might not be able to move quickly enough this time.
"It's not that hard to reverse engineer," he said via telephone.
Pfizer plans to explore strategic alternatives, including a possible sale, of its multibillion dollar animal health and nutrition businesses, the world's largest drugmaker said Thursday.
Options for the businesses also include a full or partial separation through a spin-off, or another transaction, the company said.
Pfizer, which faces the U.S. patent expiration of its top-selling Lipitor cholesterol drug in November, has previously said it was reviewing its various businesses to determine whether they should be divested.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation will close its tabloid News of the World after this Sunday's edition, as a result of an escalating phone hacking scandal, James Murdoch said on Thursday.
James Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch and Chairman and Chief Executive of News Corporation, Europe and Asia.
"The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account," the deputy chief operating officer of News Corporation told staff. "But it failed when it came to itself."
In the wake of one of the biggest dope scandals in the country, the government on Thursday appointed Justice (retd) Mukul Mudgal to inquire into all aspects of the fiasco.
India's top eight athletes, including three members of the Commonwealth Games and Asiad gold medal winning sprinters, had tested positive for anabolic steroids in out-of-competition testing.
The one-member committee, which will be assisted by NADA's senior Project Manager V Jayaramaan, has been asked to submit its report within six weeks.
As per the terms of reference stated in the Sports Ministry's order issued on Thursday, the Committee has been asked to "determine the facts and circumstances leading to large scale recent incidents of alleged doping in Athletics discipline."
Justice Mudgal, former chief justice of Punjab and Haryana Hight Court, will also "examine reasons for such large scale prevalence of doping and modus operandi involved, including availability of the prohibited substances in and around training camps/competitions."
The committee will "enquire into the role of agencies involved, if any. Suggest remedial measures to improve the protocols of dope testing and its integrity and promptness so that such lapses, if any, do not happen in future."
Indian athletics was rocked by a doping scandal recently when eight athletes, including Ashwini Akkunji, Mandeep Kaur and Sini Jose, who were part of the CWG and Asian Games gold-winning relay quartet, tested positive for banned substances.
