Citigroup - Borrowing Just To Pay Dividends?

I've thought I've seen it all when the Major Holders of Northern Rock went to the Bank of England to borrow money to pay themselves dividends, but at least that was in their own country. I guess the good ole USA is so broke that they had to go beggin' to some oil shieks. Bloomberg wrote it up right here.

"Citigroup sought a cash infusion from the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, one of seven sheikdoms that comprise the United Arab Emirates, because losses on U.S. subprime-mortgage investments left the bank short of its own capital targets."

They even admit that the shareholders are "ultimately the ones who are paying." What astounds me is they ask some little asset management executive, who has about 70K shares, to comment. Why not ask one of the big boys below? The ones with 230M shares. You can see that less than one percent of the shareholders (called Major Holders) control almost 25% of the shares.

It's also disconcerting that the British, French and now the Shieks are dividing up our largest bank. And our government was worried about a few ports being sold off not too long ago. What do you supposed they are thinking now? I would guess that the rats are abandoning the USS Titanic, and we're being locked-in below the decks.

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Symbol Name Of Corporation C Major Holders Citigroup Inc. (As of 30-Jun-2007) (As of 30-Jun-2006) Top 10 Institutional Holders Shares 2007 Value 2006 Capital Research And Management Company 230,517,177 4.63% $11,823,226,008 3.59% Barclays Global Investors UK Holdings Ltd 179,123,520 3.60% $9,187,245,340 4.70% State Street Corporation 150,346,292 3.02% $7,711,261,316 3.11% AXA (Paris, France) 144,848,238 2.91% $7,429,266,127 3.43% Vanguard Group, Inc. (The) 139,606,101 2.81% $7,160,396,920 2.55% Wellington Management Company, LLP 104,426,206 2.10% $5,356,020,105 2.39% FMR Corporation (Fidelity Management & Research Corp) 87,306,811 1.76% $4,477,966,336 1.42% Morgan Stanley 69,711,306 1.40% $3,575,492,884 1.28% UBS Global Asset Management (Americas) Inc 68,769,985 1.38% $3,527,212,530 1.28% Mellon Financial Corporation 57,947,534 1.16% $2,972,129,018 -.--% % of Shares Held by All Insider and 5% Owners: 1% 1% Top 10 [0.7%] of 1479 Institutional Holders Control 24.77% 25.01% Percentage of Barclays and "Associates" Control 9.18% 10.35%

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© 2007 by Edward Ulysses Cate
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