Merrill Lynch raised a further $7.3 billion (£3.65 billion) yesterday by
selling bonds and preferred shares to boost its capital reserves after the
$6.5 billion hit it took in the first quarter from the credit crunch.
Merrill’s latest fundraising comes after the group agreed a $4.4 billion
capital injection from Temasek, the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund, and a
seperate $6.6 billion infusion from a group of investors including the
Kuwaiti investment authority.
It came a day after Citigroup amassed a further $6 billion of cash to boost
its depleted capital reseves through the sale of preferred shares.
Vikram Pandit, the chief executive of Citigroup, faced a wall of resentment
over pay and his precessor’s exit package as he met its shareholders
yesterday for the first time since taking the top job in December.
More than 1,000 people packed Citigroup’s annual meeting at the Hilton Hotel
in New York, many of them cheering as investors queued up to condemn
executives’ remuneration packages in the face of billions of dollars of
losses from sub-prime investments.
“Where can you get a job where you do nothing to earn your money and get paid
in advance? Citigroup,” one shareholder complained, referring to recent
executive pay and stock option awards.
“How can you justify paying those people that kind of money?”
Sir Win Bischoff, the Citigroup chairman, said that the group worked in a
competitive industry and needed to pay good money to retain staff.
To laughter, the shareholder replied: “But people that could do that job are a
dime a dozen. There are probably plenty in here that could do it.”
Another investor noted that “shareholder outrage over compensation” had been
the dominant theme of the meeting and said: “There is something wrong in
this company. The board of directors has been asleep for years.”
Charles Prince, who resigned as chairman and chief executive in December,
walked away with an exit package worth $42 billion in stock awards, pension
payments and a bonus.
Gary Crittenden, the chief financial officer, made $19.3 million. Citigroup’s
shares have nearly halved in the past year as the company has reported a
succession of losses.
However, Mr Pandit did offer his beleaguered shareholders some cheer as he
maintained the banking group’s dividend and said that the credit crunch was
more than halfway through.
He promised to “aggressively shed noncore assets” as part of his commitment to
cutting costs and increasing efficiency.
Mr Pandit said that Citigroup, which has lost $32 billion in the credit
crunch so far, was taking steps to control risk and was confident that its
risk-management operation could become a “competitive advantage” for the
group.
Citigroup said that it would keep its quarterly dividend steady at 32 cents a
share for the first quarter.
The bank cut its dividend by 41 per cent in January, its first reduction since
the early 1990s, and some analysts had been expecting a further reduction.
