May 9, 2008 8:20AM
Citigroup Analysts Meeting In A Few:Pandit Needs To Announce Some Changes
By Donna Fuscaldo
Investors are angry. Shares of Citigroup (C )are down more than 50% since setting a high last spring of $55.55. The financial behemoth has taken a massive hit as the credit market malaise has wrecked havoc on most of Wall Street. While Citigroup has raised some $40 billion since November and widened its stock offering from $3 billion to $4 billion Citigroup’s new Chief Executive Vikram Pandit is still on the hot seat. Pandit is sure to face some tough questions from Wall Street at its analyst meeting happening in a few minutes. Pandit has deflected calls to break the company up, which has angered lots of investors, but has shown little progress in righting the ship so far. Reports out this morning said Citigroup has identified $400 billion in assets to sell and could lay out plans at the meeting. Like most analyst meetings, Citigroup is sure to put a positive spin on its businesses and face some softball questions from Citigroup bulls. Still there are those bears out there, like Meredith Whitney at Oppenheimer, who could call Citigroup executives including Pandit to task for the company’s dismal performance. One upshot for the leaders of Citigroup: they probably won’t have to worry about getting fruit thrown at them. A real fear Citigroup had during its shareholder meeting. (Check out EMAC’s Stock Watch posting from April 29th for more on that).
