Citigroup Rescues SIVs With $58 Billion Debt; Ratings Get Cut

Citigroup Rescues SIVs With $58 Billion Debt; Ratings Get Cut

By Shannon D. Harrington and Elizabeth Hester

Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc. will take over seven troubled investment funds and assume $58 billion of debt to avoid forced asset sales that would further erode confidence in capital markets. Moody's Investors Service lowered the bank's credit ratings.

The biggest U.S. bank by assets will rescue the so-called structured investment vehicles, or SIVs, taking responsibility for their $49 billion of assets, the New York-based company said in a statement late yesterday.

Citigroup follows HSBC Holdings Plc, Societe Generale SA and WestLB AG in bailing out SIVs to avert fire sales of assets. The funds, which sell short-term debt and invest the proceeds in higher-yielding securities, cut their holdings by more than 25 percent since August to $298 billion, according to Moody's. The decline may reduce the urgency for a bailout sponsored by the U.S. Treasury, Citigroup, Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

``That was really the last major outstanding piece of the SIV problem,'' said Peter Crane, founder of Crane Data LLC, the Westborough, Massachusetts-based publisher of Money Fund Intelligence. ``The SIV problem is very close to resolution.''

Standard & Poor's 500 Index futures rose 4.5 to 1503 after Citigroup's announcement.

Moody's lowered Citigroup's credit rating to Aa3, the fourth-highest level, from Aa2 late yesterday. The bank will probably ``take sizable writedowns'' for securities backed by home mortgages and collateralized debt obligations, Moody's Senior Vice President Sean Jones said in a statement.

``Citigroup's weak earnings should prohibit the bank from rapidly restoring weak capital ratios,'' which may lead to further downgrades, Jones said.

Biggest Threats

SIVs emerged in August as one of the biggest threats to capital markets that were rocked by record high defaults on subprime mortgages. Financial institutions have since reported more than $70 billion of losses and writedowns. Citigroup invented SIVs in 1998 and was the biggest manager of the funds.

The average net asset values of SIVs tumbled to 55 percent from 71 percent a month ago and 102 percent in June, according to Moody's. The net asset value is the amount that would be left for investors if a fund had to sell holdings and repay debt. Moody's said Nov. 30 that it may cut the credit ratings on $105 billion of SIV debt.

Concerns about asset values contributed to the sudden increase in corporate borrowing costs by driving investors away from all but the safest government bonds. The amount of U.S. asset-backed commercial paper that SIVs rely on to finance investments fell about 34 percent since August, to $791 billion this week, the lowest since October 2005, the Federal Reserve in Washington said yesterday.

`Best Outcome'

Florida schools and towns pulled almost half their money last month from a $27 billion state-run fund used to pay teachers and other day-to-day expenses after discovering it invested in defaulted and downgraded SIVs. Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America, the second-largest U.S. bank, said last week that it will liquidate a $12 billion enhanced cash fund after losses on holdings that included debt sold by SIVs.

Central banks in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Switzerland and the euro region agreed Dec. 12 to coordinate efforts to restore confidence in the financial system, promote lending between banks and help keep the economy out of recession.

The decision to bring the SIVs onto the balance sheet marks a turnaround for Citigroup. In a Nov. 5 regulatory filing, the company said it ``will not take actions that will require the company to consolidate the SIVs.''

Wiping Away Sins

``After considering a full range of funding options, this commitment is the best outcome for Citi and the SIVs,'' Vikram Pandit, who was named chief executive officer on Dec. 11, said in the statement.

Citigroup has reduced the assets of the SIVs from $87 billion in August. Last month, the company provided $7.6 billion of financing after the SIVs were unable to repay maturing debt. The disclosure in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission came a day after the company announced as much as $11 billion of writedowns on debt linked to subprime mortgages and the resignation of Chief Executive Officer Charles O. ``Chuck'' Prince III.

``It speaks to a change in leadership,'' Joshua Rosner, managing director at Graham Fisher & Co., whose New York-based firm analyzes structured finance and real estate investments. ``It speaks to a new management who can wipe away the sins, call them someone else's and start to heal.''

Citigroup said the decision was independent of the Treasury plan to create the $80 billion so-called SuperSIV that would buy assets from other funds that couldn't finance their investments.

No Need

``The need now has completely gone away,'' said Joseph Mason, associate professor of business at Drexel University in Philadelphia and a former financial economist at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. ``They were the only ones keeping it alive.''

Treasury spokeswoman Brookly McLaughlin declined to comment other than to point to Citigroup's statement on the SuperSIV. The company said it ``continues to support'' forming the fund.

Sixty percent of the assets in Citigroup's SIVs are debt owed by financial institutions. Another 13 percent is in mortgage-backed bonds and collateralized debt obligations, which are securities created by packaging bonds and loans. The company said 54 percent have Aaa ratings by Moody's and 43 percent are ranked Aa. The rest is rated A.

The debt Citigroup is assuming consists of $10 billion in commercial paper that matures in an average of 2.4 months. The other $48 billion is in medium-term notes that come due in 10.1 months on average.

Tier 1 Capital

Citigroup didn't give details of how it will finance the assets other than to say it will provide a ``support facility'' that will be in place early next year.

Taking on the SIV assets will reduce the capital ratio that regulators monitor to gauge the bank's ability to withstand losses on bad loans. The so-called Tier 1 ratio will drop by 0.16 percentage point from 7.32 percent as of Sept. 30, according to the company's statement. Citigroup expects the ratio to return to its target level of 7.5 percent by the end of the second quarter of 2008.

Citigroup got a $7.5 billion cash infusion last month by selling a 4.9 percent stake to the ruling family of Abu Dhabi after the bank's capital ratio fell below the company's target.

CIBC World Markets analyst Meredith Whitney says the bank still needs to raise $30 billion more, and may have to cut its dividend.


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