C - Citigroup Inc.
Chart Events
Engulfing Line (Bearish)
Performance Outlook
- Short Term2W - 6W
- Mid Term6W - 9M
- Long Term9M+
| Previous Close | 49.16 |
| Open | 48.02 |
| Bid | 48.15 x 1400 |
| Ask | 48.19 x 800 |
| Day's Range | 47.56 - 49.48 |
| 52 Week Range | 32.00 - 83.11 |
| Volume | 35,710,964 |
| Avg. Volume | 32,560,717 |
| Market Cap | 99.74B |
| Beta (5Y Monthly) | 1.83 |
| PE Ratio (TTM) | 6.59 |
| EPS (TTM) | 7.26 |
| Earnings Date | Jul 14, 2020 |
| Forward Dividend & Yield | 2.04 (4.15%) |
| Ex-Dividend Date | May 01, 2020 |
| 1y Target Est | 61.10 |
Fair Value
Related Research
- Bloomberg
Citi Breaks With Rivals on Whether Work From Home Is Permanent
(Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc. plans to bring its workers back to the office when the Covid-19 pandemic ends, breaking with a raft of competitors planning to make remote operations permanent for many staff.“Our goal is to get our employees back,” Chief Executive Officer Mike Corbat said Friday at a virtual investor conference.Working remotely has definite advantages, Corbat said, including giving him the ability to meet with clients and employees from around the world all in the same week. But he said the firm doesn’t plan to leave employees at home permanently.The pandemic has forced companies to send thousands of employees to their home offices as a way to slow the spread of the deadly virus. For some workers, including those at Citigroup competitors Bank of New York Mellon Corp. and Synchrony Financial, the changes may be permanent, officials there have said.Citigroup, with roughly 200,000 employees around the world, has already begun bringing staff back to some of its offices in Asia, with the Hong Kong office at 50% capacity and Taiwan at 75%, Corbat said.On other topics, the CEO said Citigroup’s fixed-income trading business has continued seeing the good momentum it experienced in the first quarter, when revenue surged almost 40%. The unit has benefited from increased corporate-bond issuance, Corbat said.“It’s been an active period,” he said, with “very good momentum sustained and continuing to build coming out of the first quarter.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Wall Street Has Billions to Lose in China From Rising Strain
(Bloomberg) -- Wall Street giants such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have tens of billions of dollars at stake in China as political tension risks derailing the nation’s opening of its $45 trillion financial market.Five big U.S. banks had a combined $70.8 billion of exposure to China in 2019, with JPMorgan alone plowing $19.2 billion into lending, trading and investing. That’s a 10% increase from 2018.While their assets in the country are comparatively small, they have big expansion plans there that may come undone if financial services firms are dragged into the tit-for-tat between the two countries. Not only would that cloud their growth plans, it would also threaten the income they have generated over the years from advising Chinese companies such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.Profits in China’s brokerage industry could hit $47 billion by 2026, Goldman estimates, with foreign firms gunning for a considerable chunk. There are $8 billion in estimated commercial banking profits as well as a projected $30 trillion in overall assets to go after, also being pursued by fund giants such as Blackrock Inc. and Vanguard Group Inc.“If you’re an American financial institution and you have an approved plan to expand into China, you’re going to continue that plan to the extent that the U.S. government allows you to because you see great future profits,” said James Stent, a former banker who’s spent more than a decade on the boards of two Chinese lenders. “A U.S.-China cold war is not good for your plans to build business in China.”After years of trade war turmoil, U.S. policy makers are now starting to take aim at the financial industry amid growing skepticism over American firms plowing money into a country perceived as a big geopolitical foe. Policy makers and lawmakers are looking at restricting U.S. pension fund investments in Chinese companies and limiting the ability of Chinese companies to raise capital in the U.S.A body advising the U.S. Congress this week questioned Wall Street’s push, saying lawmakers need to “evaluate the desirability of greater U.S. participation in a financial market that remains warped by the political priorities of a strategic competitor.” Add to that potential sanctions against China and even its banks over the crackdown on Hong Kong, and the situation could further escalate.President Donald Trump said he’s “not happy with China” after the country passed a new security law on Hong Kong and will announce new U.S. policies on Friday. His top economic adviser said Beijing would be held accountable by the U.S.Here’s a run down on the biggest U.S. banks’ presence in China right now and their plans.GoldmanGoldman, which has spent years lobbying for control of its onshore business, won approval this year. Chief Executive Officer David Solomon has pledged to infuse its mainland business with hundreds of millions of dollars in new capital as the bank plans to embark on a hiring spree to double its workforce to 600 and ramp up a wide variety of businesses.Goldman put its “cross-border outstandings” to China at $13.2 billion at the end of last year. But its two onshore operations had capital of just 1.8 billion yuan ($251 million), making a profit of almost 300 million yuan.A spokesman for Goldman declined to comment.Morgan StanleyHosting an annual summit in Beijing with 1,900 investors and 600 companies last year, Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer James Gorman said in a Bloomberg Television interview that the bank is in China “for the long run.” He highlighted its presence there for 25 years and its handling of hundreds of billions of dollars in equity and merger deals for Chinese businesses.Morgan Stanley won a nod to take majority control of its securities venture this year, and last year had a net exposure of $4.1 billion to Chinese clients. Its local securities unit, however, has revenue of just 132 million yuan, posting a loss of 109 million yuan last year.The bank has been overhauling senior management of the venture, installing its staff in key roles. It plans to apply for additional licenses to broaden its products and invest in new businesses, build market-making capability and expand its asset management partnership and ultimately take control.“It’s a natural evolution to bring the global investment banks into this market,” Gorman said in May last year.A Morgan Stanley spokesman declined to comment.JPMorganThe biggest U.S. bank has been doing business in China since 1921. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon has said that his firm is committed to bringing its “full force” to the country. This year it applied for full control of an asset management firm as well as a securities venture, and is expanding its office space in China’s tallest skyscraper in downtown Shanghai.JPMorgan’s China total exposure in 2019 was $19.2 billion, including $11.3 billion in lending and deposits and $6.5 billion in trading and investing.JPMorgan China’s banking unit had 47 billion yuan in assets last year and made a profit of 276 million yuan, while its newly started securities firm had capital of 800 million yuan.A JPMorgan spokeswoman declined to comment.CitigroupCitigroup Inc., which has been doing business in China since 1902, had total exposure to the country of $18.7 billion at the end of last year. Its local banking arm had total assets of 178 billion yuan, making a profit of 2.1 billion yuan.Citigroup, which is setting up a new securities venture in China, is the only U.S. lender that has a consumer banking business in the country with footprint in 12 cities including Beijing, Changsha and Chengdu.New York-based Citigroup said last month that it has doubled its overall revenue from China to more than $1 billion over the past decade.China represents 1.1% of Citi’s total global exposure and includes local top tier corporate loans and loans to US and other global companies with operations in China, a bank spokesman said.Bank of AmericaBank of America Corp., the only major bank to decide against pursuing a securities joint venture, is continuing to expand into the world’s second-largest economy. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender is looking to provide a fuller range of fixed income services in the country.Its largest emerging market country exposure in 2019 was China, with net of $15.6 billion, concentrated in loans to large state-owned companies, subsidiaries of multinational corporations and commercial banks. It followed only the U.S., U.K., Germany, Canada and France in terms of exposure for the bank.A spokeswoman for the bank declined to comment.(Adds Trump comments in eighth paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Reuters
U.S. judge orders 15 banks to face big investors' currency rigging lawsuit
A U.S. judge on Thursday said institutional investors, including BlackRock Inc <BLK.N> and Allianz SE's <ALVG.DE> Pacific Investment Management Co, can pursue much of their lawsuit accusing 15 major banks of rigging prices in the $6.6 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market. U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield in Manhattan said the nearly 1,300 plaintiffs, including many mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, plausibly alleged that the banks conspired to rig currency benchmarks from 2003 to 2013 and profit at their expense. "This is an injury of the type the antitrust laws were intended to prevent," Schofield wrote in a 40-page decision.
- Barrons.com
A Giant Pension Bought Citigroup and CVS Stock. Here’s What It’s Selling.
Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, known as CDPQ, more than doubled its stake in Citigroup and bought more CVS stock in the first quarter. It also sold GE and McDonald’s stock.
- Barrons.com
Wells Fargo Stock Is Cheap. Why One Analyst Says Not to Buy It.
D.A. Davidson initiated coverage of the beleaguered bank, slapping a Neutral rating on the stock. It is still in the Federal Reserve’s doghouse, operating under a $2 trillion cap on its assets, although the central bank has temporarily removed the limit so Wells Fargo can make loans under the Paycheck Protection Program. Last year, it named a new chief executive, Charles Scharf, to turn things around.
- Zacks
Citigroup (C) Mulls to Slowly Reopen US Branches From July
The main hurdles in the reopening of branches that Citigroup (C) is currently facing are concerns regarding the daily commute of employees to offices.
- South China Morning Post
Wall Street stands to lose tens of billions of dollars in China from deteriorating relations between world's two largest economies
Wall Street giants such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase have tens of billions of dollars at stake in China as political tension risks derailing the nation's opening of its US$45 trillion financial market.Five big US banks had a combined US$70.8 billion of exposure to China in 2019, with JPMorgan alone ploughing US$19.2 billion into lending, trading and investing. That's a 10 per cent increase from 2018.While their assets in the country are comparatively small, they have big expansion plans there that may come undone if financial services firms are dragged into the tit-for-tat between the two countries. Not only would that cloud their growth plans, it would also threaten the income they have generated over the years from advising Chinese companies such as Alibaba Group Holding.Profits in China's brokerage industry could hit US$47 billion by 2026, Goldman estimates, with foreign firms gunning for a considerable chunk. There are US$8 billion in estimated commercial banking profits as well as a projected US$30 trillion in overall assets to go after, also being pursued by fund giants such as Blackrock and Vanguard Group."If you're an American financial institution and you have an approved plan to expand into China, you're going to continue that plan to the extent that the US government allows you to because you see great future profits," said James Stent, a former banker who's spent more than a decade on the boards of two Chinese lenders. "A US-China Cold War is not good for your plans to build business in China."After years of trade war turmoil, US policymakers are now starting to take aim at the financial industry amid growing scepticism over American firms ploughing money into a country perceived as a big geopolitical foe. Policymakers and lawmakers are looking at restricting US pension fund investments in Chinese companies and limiting the ability of Chinese companies to raise capital in the US.A body advising the US Congress this week questioned Wall Street's push, saying lawmakers need to "evaluate the desirability of greater US participation in a financial market that remains warped by the political priorities of a strategic competitor." Add to that potential sanctions against China and even its banks over the crackdown on Hong Kong, and the situation could further escalate.President Donald Trump said he's "not happy with China" after the country passed a new security law on Hong Kong and will announce new US policies on Friday. His top economic adviser said Beijing would be held accountable by the US.Here's a run down on the biggest US banks' presence in China right now and their plans. * GoldmanGoldman, which has spent years lobbying for control of its onshore business, won approval this year. Chief Executive Officer David Solomon has pledged to infuse its mainland business with hundreds of millions of dollars in new capital as the bank plans to embark on a hiring spree to double its workforce to 600 and ramp up a wide variety of businesses.Goldman put its "cross-border outstandings" to China at US$13.2 billion at the end of last year. But its two onshore operations had capital of just 1.8 billion yuan (US$251 million), making a profit of almost 300 million yuan.A spokesman for Goldman declined to comment.Hosting an annual summit in Beijing with 1,900 investors and 600 companies last year, Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer James Gorman said in a Bloomberg Television interview that the bank is in China "for the long run." He highlighted its presence there for 25 years and its handling of hundreds of billions of dollars in equity and merger deals for Chinese businesses.Morgan Stanley won a nod to take majority control of its securities venture this year, and last year had a net exposure of US$4.1 billion to Chinese clients. Its local securities unit, however, has revenue of just 132 million yuan, posting a loss of 109 million yuan last year.The bank has been overhauling senior management of the venture, installing its staff in key roles. It plans to apply for additional licenses to broaden its products and invest in new businesses, build market-making capability and expand its asset management partnership and ultimately take control."It's a natural evolution to bring the global investment banks into this market," Gorman said in May last year.A Morgan Stanley spokesman declined to comment. * JPMorganThe biggest US bank has been doing business in China since 1921. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon has said that his firm is committed to bringing its "full force" to the country. This year it applied for full control of an asset management firm as well as a securities venture, and is expanding its office space in China's tallest skyscraper in downtown Shanghai.JPMorgan's China total exposure in 2019 was US$19.2 billion, including US$11.3 billion in lending and deposits and US$6.5 billion in trading and investing.JPMorgan China's banking unit had 47 billion yuan in assets last year and made a profit of 276 million yuan, while its newly started securities firm had capital of 800 million yuan.A JPMorgan spokeswoman declined to comment.Citigroup, which has been doing business in China since 1902, had total exposure to the country of US$18.7 billion at the end of last year. Its local banking arm had total assets of 178 billion yuan, making a profit of 2.1 billion yuan.Citigroup, which is setting up a new securities venture in China, is the only US lender that has a consumer banking business in the country with footprint in 12 cities including Beijing, Changsha and Chengdu.New York-based Citigroup said last month that it has doubled its overall revenue from China to more than US$1 billion over the past decade.China represents 1.1 per cent of Citi's total global exposure and includes local top tier corporate loans and loans to US and other global companies with operations in China, a bank spokesman said.Bank of America, the only major bank to decide against pursuing a securities joint venture, is continuing to expand into the world's second-largest economy. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender is looking to provide a fuller range of fixed income services in the country.Its largest emerging market country exposure in 2019 was China, with net of US$15.6 billion, concentrated in loans to large state-owned companies, subsidiaries of multinational corporations and commercial banks. It followed only the US, UK, Germany, Canada and France in terms of exposure for the bank.A spokeswoman for the bank declined to comment.This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2020 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
- GuruFocus.com
Bill Ackman on the Importance of Free Cash Flow
The guru's fastest investment decision took just 4 hours Continue reading...
- Reuters
Citigroup looks to return some staff to NY headquarters over the summer - Bloomberg News
Corbat said on Thursday the return will be "granular, site-by-site and within those sites, job-by-job", adding that sometime in July or possibly August is when the bank hopes to return about 5% of some 12,000 employees at Citigroup's main building in Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood. Staff returning to work will begin next month at the Canary Wharf complex in London, he added. "The return of our colleagues to our sites will vary depending on local conditions and be driven by data, not dates," Citi spokeswoman Jennifer Lowney said in a statement.
- Reuters
Citigroup looks to reopen NY headquarters to some staff in July - Bloomberg News
Citigroup Inc looks to reopen its New York headquarters to a small number of employees as soon as July, with workers returning to London offices even earlier, Chief Executive Officer Michael Corbat told Bloomberg News in an interview https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-28/citi-s-corbat-maps-out-june-july-reopening-amid-commuting-fear. Corbat said on Thursday the return will be "granular, site-by-site and within those sites, job-by-job", adding that July is a tentative target for returning about 5% of about 12,000 employees at Citigroup's main building in Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood. Staff returning to work will begin next month at the Canary Wharf complex in London, he added.
- Bloomberg
Citi’s Corbat Pursues ‘Slow’ Reopening Amid Commuter Fears
(Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc. plans to reopen its New York headquarters to a small number of employees as soon as July, and workers will return to London offices even earlier, as Chief Executive Officer Michael Corbat gingerly pushes the bank forward into a world reshaped by the coronavirus pandemic.“It’s going to be driven by data, it’s likely to be slow, it’s going to be granular, site-by-site and within those sites, job-by-job,” Corbat said in a Bloomberg “Front Row” interview. On a follow-up phone call, he said sometime in July or possibly August is when Citigroup hopes to return about 5% of the 12,000-odd staff at its main building in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. Re-entry will begin next month at the Canary Wharf complex in London.That timetable makes Citigroup one of first big banks to give clear guidance on one of the biggest dilemmas posed by the global outbreak: when to send people back to work. While the company has kept a few hundred essential employees on site since skyscrapers across New York cleared out in mid-March, the return of even a few bankers or traders from vacation homes in the Hamptons and the Rocky Mountains would send a signal that Wall Street is finding its footing again.New York, until recently the hottest hot spot for coronavirus, has used social distancing, mask-wearing and increased testing to dramatically reduce its infection and death rates. Now, like CEOs around the world, Corbat is trying to balance the demands of his business with the dangers of returning to old norms too quickly.“The conversations that I’m having are much more about the commute in urban areas, it’s getting on the train, it’s getting on the subway, it’s getting on the bus and it’s probably less about the workspace,” Corbat, 60, said from Wyoming, where he and his family went to escape the outbreak in New York. “The biggest hurdle we’re going to have is not getting people to operate in the office, it’s getting them to the office.”In Hong Kong, where the pandemic has been more contained, Citigroup only recently increased staffing to 50%. In London, some of the company’s 5,000 employees will start returning next week as part of a plan to repopulate offices by less than 10%.Yet Corbat was clear he doesn’t envision a virtual bank. Offices are necessary both for face-to-face meetings and because banking is an “apprenticeship business” that requires human interaction, he said. That’s why Citigroup is re-examining everything from turnstiles to cafeterias to elevators and is considering new locations in the New York suburbs for employees “who might be uncomfortable getting on mass transit” until a vaccine is widely available.Corbat also said he’s considering less business travel, especially after seeing how well Citigroup can serve clients in online meetings and conferences.JPMorgan Chase & Co. has said that offices will be staffed at no more than half of capacity for the foreseeable future. Bank of America Corp., meantime, plans to notify employees at least 30 days before they’re scheduled to return. Corbat, too, said he has told his workforce of 200,000, “You’re not going to wake up one morning or go to bed one evening with a blast email saying, ‘Tomorrow’s the day to come back.’”As much as it stirs anxiety, plays into political debates and captivates the public’s imagination, the question of when and how quickly to reopen is just one of the challenges Citigroup faces. Corbat also is wrestling with collapsing growth, record unemployment, rising tensions over global trade and the consequences of unprecedented aid and intervention by governments and monetary authorities.Citigroup added almost $5 billion to its bad-loan reserves in the first quarter, mostly in preparation for potential consumer defaults in the months ahead. At the same time, the bank may struggle to make money on new loans now that interest rates are near zero again and the Federal Reserve is considering yield-curve manipulation to keep borrowing costs down.Even less clear are the longer-term implications of ballooning deficits and central bank balance sheets.“We do not want our government in the U.S. or other governments to come out in a position where the debt at the federal level is untenable,” Corbat said. “We’re likely to be in this slower-growth environment for an extended period of time.”A decade ago, Citigroup was in no position to warn about imprudence. After loading up on risky debts and derivatives before the financial crisis, the bank needed two federal bailouts and became a poster child for Wall Street recklessness. At bottom, its shares lost 97% of their value.Now, Citigroup has comparatively ample capital and liquidity, and even during a pandemic Corbat is still thinking about expanding in Asia. Growing distrust of China in the West hasn’t curbed his ambitions there, nor has the Chinese government’s recent move to curtail rights and freedoms in Hong Kong.“China remains a very important place for a big number of our clients and so we’re going to make sure we’re there to support them,” Corbat said. “Between some of the political challenges and the health-care challenges, it hasn’t been easy, but we remain committed to Hong Kong.”(Adds details on plans for London offices in sixth graph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- MarketWatch
These big banks may be at risk of dividend cuts after the Federal Reserve’s stress tests
The annual stress tests will be different this year, as the Fed incorporates fallout from the coronavirus crisis in its analysis.
- Bloomberg
Jamie Dimon Captures the Stock Market Moment
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Don’t fight the U.S. Federal Reserve — repeat that mantra until it sticks.Jamie Dimon, the boss of JPMorgan Chase & Co., put it well this week. “This wasn’t the bazooka,” he said, referring to Jay Powell’s response to the coronavirus crisis. “The Fed took out the whole military and applied it. Just announcing these programs reduced spreads (the difference between corporate bond yields and their benchmarks) in the market. It’s going to save a lot of small businesses.” In the past month, the equity market’s glass has gone from pretty much empty to at least half full and that’s down to the coordinated fiscal and monetary effort from authorities far and wide. You want some quantitative easing? Please, have some more and take some for the journey home. Even those foot draggers at the European Union are talking about radical fiscal action. We won’t really see a V-shaped economic recovery, but it seems like we’ve stopped the L.Nonetheless, this is a recovery based so far on asset-price inflation rather than any economic data. Central bank and government action may have restored financial valuations but real incomes will still suffer dramatically for a long while to come. Unemployment and diminished consumption cannot be magicked away.The stock market is looking even further into the distance than usual to justify its valuations, which is sometimes hard to square away against a constant stream of dire economic statistics and evaporating company earnings. Since QE came to life during the global financial crisis, it has paid for investors to cast aside their usual forward-earnings analysis and focus instead on the rising tide of money. The central banks have learned their post-2008 lessons and have barely put a foot wrong this time. This is having uneven effects, however. The bulk of the stimulus is coming into investment-grade assets because that’s where central banks feel more comfortable. Credit spreads have recovered most in BBB and A-rated bonds. High-yield yield assets improved sharply at first, but this has abated. The spread between the yields on investment-grade debt and those of junk bonds is still nearly double the levels seen in February. Similarly, new debt issuance is motoring again but only for the better-quality names. While U.S. banks such as Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. are returning for the fifth or sixth time this year to replenish capital, the junk sector has been restricted to one-off selective deals — often with eye-watering yields.The change in stock market sentiment isn’t just about QE. The oil price collapse has come and gone and fears of a devastating second wave of Covid-19 are easing. Short-selling bans have quietly been lifted in several European countries too, and some of the recent improvement may be explained by that. The sound of economies cranking back into life can just about be made out over the whirring of the monetary printing presses, allowing even bombed-out old economy stocks to recover, not just the new technology darlings.Notably, some of the recent action has been in high-dividend stocks, which had been forced to skip shareholder payouts at the height of the crisis. Investors had feared that the dividend bans might last several years; now they think it may be a quarter or two. Many investment funds work off a dividend-yield model.Investment managers may be doing the natural thing right now and chasing the rising stock market indexes, but that doesn’t mean they’re brimful of confidence. The Bank of America fund manager survey for May shows extreme bearishness pervades, with only 10% expecting a V-shaped recovery and 68% expecting stock prices to fall. Given the recent positive news on the virus and the gradual ending of lockdowns, the June survey might be different.The fiscal response will determine how the economy recovers over the long term but the monetary triage has worked better than anyone could have expected in those ugly days of March. For that we should be grateful, and for the stock market’s semi-rational exuberance.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Marcus Ashworth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering European markets. He spent three decades in the banking industry, most recently as chief markets strategist at Haitong Securities in London.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- GuruFocus.com
US Indexes Close With Another Day of Gains Wednesday
Dow Jones gains 2.21% Continue reading...
- GuruFocus.com
Lessons on When to Sell From Terry Smith
Poor capital allocation, unsatisfactory growth and narrowing moat are sell signals Continue reading...
- Reuters
Occidental is sued by shareholders, bondholders over Anadarko merger
Occidental Petroleum Corp has been sued by investors who claim they suffered billions of dollars of losses because the heavily indebted company concealed its inability to weather plunging oil prices, after paying $35.7 billion to acquire Anadarko Petroleum Corp. The proposed securities class action was filed late Tuesday in a New York state court in Manhattan on behalf of former Anadarko shareholders who swapped their stock for Occidental shares, and investors who acquired $24.5 billion of Occidental bonds that helped fund the August 2019 merger. Investors said Occidental should have disclosed in its stock and bond registration statements how quadrupling its debt load to $40 billion would leave it "precariously exposed" to falling oil prices, and undermine its ability to boost shale oil production and its common stock dividend.
- PR Newswire
Chesapeake Utilities Corporation Announces New Officer Appointments
Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (NYSE: CPK), announced today the appointment of Danielle Mulligan to Assistant Vice President of Communications and Marketing for Chesapeake Utilities Corporation and Kevin McCrackin to Assistant Vice President of Business Development for Chesapeake Utilities Corporation and Vice President of Marlin Gas Services.
- GuruFocus.com
Stocks Close Higher Tuesday After the Long Weekend
Dow Jones gains 2.17% Continue reading...
- Bloomberg
Bank Stocks Are Either Cheap or Signal More Pain
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Something strange happened in the U.S. stock market on Tuesday.No, it wasn’t that the S&P 500 crossed 3,000 for the first time in almost three months, generating a yelp of joy from the White House and groans from Wall Street veterans who remain perplexed at the seeming disconnect between financial markets and the American economy.Rather, the most unusual part of the latest rally is that bank shares clearly led the advance. As of last week, Bloomberg’s 18-company S&P 500 Banks Index was down more than 40% in 2020, trailing the broader stock market by an almost unprecedented degree since the coronavirus pandemic shut down the world’s largest economy. However, the index soared 9% on Tuesday, far and away a bigger gain than any of the other 23 industry groups. A simple ratio of this bank index to the broad S&P 500 shows the extent to which financials have been beaten down so far in 2020 relative to other segments of the stock market. The gauge fell on May 13 to a level seen only twice before in data going back three decades, both in March 2009. The banks swiftly rebounded in the following months as the U.S. recession officially drew to a close in June of that year.As investors weigh the drastic gains on Wall Street against the backdrop of widespread unemployment and shuttered small businesses on Main Street, the performance of bank stocks may prove to be a crucial barometer of whether markets can sustain their exuberance. Few analysts dispute that shares of financial companies are cheap on a relative basis — but sometimes prices are depressed for good reasons. Inexpensiveness alone isn’t a compelling enough reason to expect banks to bounce back as they did in 2009. Instead, perhaps more than any other industry, a lasting rally will come down to investors’ conviction in a sharp and sustained economic recovery.Investors have a few obvious reasons to be wary of U.S. banks. For one, long-term interest rates are near record lows while traders have started to wager on negative short-term rates, even as Federal Reserve officials repeatedly question the policy. All this points to lower net interest income, a crucial metric that reflects the spread between what a company earns on its loans and what it pays on its deposits. Meanwhile, large banks have already halted share buybacks, and minutes from April’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting revealed that policy makers are debating whether they should also restrict their ability to pay dividends to shareholders during the pandemic.Whether those downsides merit a $1 trillion wipeout, akin to the 2008 financial crisis, is not so clear cut. As Bloomberg News’s Lu Wang and Felice Maranz reported, at that time the financial industry’s earnings worsened for eight consecutive quarters, but analysts only expect profit declines to last half as long this time around. Banks are broadly considered to be well capitalized — certainly much more than they were 12 years ago when they had to be bailed out by the government. JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon expressed confidence in mid-April, when the outlook was even more uncertain than today, that the biggest U.S. bank can handle “really adverse consequences.” He said on Tuesday that the U.S. could see a “fairly rapid recovery.”“The government has been pretty responsive, large companies have the wherewithal, hopefully we’re keeping the small ones alive,” he said at a virtual conference hosted by Deutsche Bank AG.It’s far too soon to declare an “all clear” on the economy, but it’s starting to look as if actions from the Fed and Congress at least helped the U.S. clear the low bar of avoiding the worst-case scenario. The numbers are still awful, especially when it comes to unemployment, but data released Tuesday showed an unexpected increase in new-home sales in April compared with those a month earlier. Broadly, Citigroup Inc.’s economic surprise index is off its lows, indicating that recent figures aren’t quite as bad as analysts expected.“The economic data have been so darn grim lately with job losses in the tens of millions that the green shoots of optimism from better consumer confidence and new home sales are welcome,” Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank NA, wrote on Tuesday. “We still can’t see a V-shaped recovery, but at least this is looking like the shortest recession in history which will be measured in months not years.”If that’s the case, investors will likely look back on the past few weeks as a time when bank stocks became far too cheap compared with other parts of the market. Yet Tuesday’s seemingly huge rally still leaves financial companies worth far less than before the pandemic, and it seems reasonable to expect they’ll remain that way for a while. After all, it’s anyone’s guess just how many loans will end up going bad and saddle banks with losses. There are far more moving parts to JPMorgan’s bottom line than that of, say, Netflix Inc., which fell 3% on Tuesday, the most in almost a month.It’s never a good idea to read too much into one optimistic trading day, especially coming out of a U.S. holiday weekend in which many Americans probably got a taste of “normal” pre-pandemic activities. But on its face, Tuesday looks as if it could be something of a turning point for bank shares. The follow-through will indicate if they were just too cheap to pass up, or if the economy truly is on the mend.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Brian Chappatta is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering debt markets. He previously covered bonds for Bloomberg News. He is also a CFA charterholder.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Yahoo Finance
NYSE president: 'While we are reopening, it is not back to business as usual'
The iconic New York Stock Exchange floor is back open for business. Here is what New York Stock Exchange President Stacey Cunningham told Yahoo Finance.
- Barrons.com
Bank Dividends Are at Risk. How Regulators Could Force Cuts.
Banks might not be ordered to halt dividends but that doesn’t mean investors can rest easy. Bank dividends have been under pressure over the past two months as profits have been constrained by low interest rates and increasing loan losses. As banks have been working to conserve capital to serve struggling clients—namely by halting buybacks—there have been calls by regulators to also suspend dividends.
- Insider Monkey
Hedge Funds Accelerated Their Citigroup Inc. (C) Exit During The Market Crash
At the end of February we announced the arrival of the first US recession since 2009 and we predicted that the market will decline by at least 20% in (Recession is Imminent: We Need A Travel Ban NOW). In these volatile markets we scrutinize hedge fund filings to get a reading on which direction each […]
- Bloomberg
Hong Kong Finance Has a Security Blanket
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- China’s decision to impose a national security law on Hong Kong has spurred speculation of capital flight and an erosion of the city’s status as an international financial center. As a venue for share offerings, at least, the near-term future is looking bright. For that, the territory can thank worsening U.S.-China relations.U.S.-listed Chinese technology companies are lining up to sell stock in Hong Kong, seeking refuge from an environment that has become increasingly less hospitable. Nasdaq-traded JD.com Inc. and NetEase Inc. are planning secondary listings in the city next month, following a trail blazed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. in November. Optimism that more companies will join them drove shares of Hong Kong’s exchange operator up more than 6% on Monday.There’s every reason to expect these stock offerings to do well, and push Hong Kong back up the rankings of the world’s largest fundraising centers. So far this year, the city is the sixth-largest market by capital raised. It topped the table for the whole of 2019 when New York-listed Alibaba sold $13 billion of stock, underscoring the existence of a strong local investor base for China’s most successful companies.The reception for Alibaba suggests that Asian institutional investors want to be able to trade China’s leading enterprises in their own time zone. JD and NetEase are also among the nation’s technology champions. Beijing-based JD competes with Alibaba in e-commerce, while Hangzhou-based NetEase is behind some of the most popular mobile games in China. Beyond these two, search-engine operator Baidu Inc. is considering delisting from Nasdaq and moving to an exchange nearer home, Reuters reported last week. The coronavirus has exacerbated tensions between Washington and Beijing, while scandals such as fabricated sales at Luckin Coffee Inc. have spurred politicians to push for tighter regulation, giving Chinese companies an incentive to list elsewhere.Hong Kong is an obvious choice. The city burnished its appeal for U.S.-traded companies last week when the compiler of the city’s benchmark Hang Seng Index said it would change its rules to admit secondary listings and companies with dual-class share structures. Stocks that join the benchmark can expect inflows from passive investors such as exchange-traded funds that track the index.Citigroup Inc. reckons that 23 of the 249 Chinese stocks traded in the U.S. meet Hong Kong’s criteria for a secondary listing, which require companies to have a market value of $5.2 billion or, alternatively, a combination of $129 million in annual sales and a $1.3 billion market cap. JD tops the group with a value of $73 billion.An even more alluring prize would be inclusion of secondary listings in Hong Kong’s stock-trading links with the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges, which would enable mainland Chinese investors to buy these shares. Alibaba wasn’t included in the stock connect, to the disappointment of some investors. China’s government could yet decide to make this happen.It’s a reminder that Beijing has levers at its disposal to help shore up Hong Kong’s economy and financial industry, which accounts for a fifth of the city’s gross domestic product — as it did after the SARS epidemic in 2003, when half a million people demonstrated against the Hong Kong government’s first, aborted attempt to introduce national security legislation. Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd. surged the most in 18 months Monday even as unrest returned to the city. Listing of American depositary receipts may double the exchange operator’s revenue, Morgan Stanley said. The Hang Seng Index, meanwhile, stabilized after slumping 5.6% on Friday.An exodus of businesses, people and capital may yet imperil Hong Kong’s role as an international financial center. The IPO outlook suggests that, rather than a sudden demise, that’s likely to be a long drawn-out process. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Nisha Gopalan is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering deals and banking. She previously worked for the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones as an editor and a reporter.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
