Citigroup and Merrill Lynch asking for more foreign cash
More trouble at Citigroup: Two of the biggest names on Wall Street are going hat in hand, again, to foreign investors. Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co., two companies that just named new chief executives after being burned by the troubles in the U.S. housing market, recently raised billions of dollars from outside investors. ...
More trouble at Citigroup:
More trouble at Citigroup:
Two of the biggest names on Wall Street are going hat in hand, again, to foreign investors.
Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co., two companies that just named new chief executives after being burned by the troubles in the U.S. housing market, recently raised billions of dollars from outside investors. Now, they are in discussions to get additional infusions of capital from investors, primarily foreign governments.
Merrill is expected to get $3 billion to $4 billion, much of it from a Middle Eastern government investment fund. Citi could get as much as $10 billion, likely all from foreign governments.
That's from the subscriber-only Wall Street Journal, but you can read a Bloomberg summary of the article here. Bloomberg notes, "Banks and securities firms in the U.S. and Europe have turned to Asian and Middle Eastern governments for about $34 billion to prop up balance sheets battered by writedowns from the collapse of the U.S. subprime market." In other words, those scary sovereign wealth funds are saving your ass right now.
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