Citi’s Upside-Down Family Tree
By Barry Ritholtz - March 25th, 2009, 3:00PM
Fascinating chart from Citigroup, showing its history from 1812 (City Bank of NY) to present, including all of the various acquisitions, mergers, etc.
One odd thing: They got the entire “tree” metaphor wrong. The older companies should be their roots, and the latest version is where its grown to. Instead, its upside down!
Someone should tell Citi that trees grow up, not downwards . . .
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Use zoom to see details
Citi tree11×17
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Source:
Citigroup.com
http://www.citigroup.com/citi/corporate/history/data/tree11×17.pdf?ieNocache=159
March 25th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
It should be portrayed as the top heavy house of cards that it is…….
March 25th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
They should show Sandy Weill/Chuck Prince cocking his leg over the tree and urinating profusely.
March 25th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Maybe they showed a tree, but MEANT a Toilet Bowl.
OK. Uncalled for, but it just popped into my head and I laughed myself silly.
March 25th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Of course, the taxpayer are the ones getting urinated on. But I digress.
March 25th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
No, this version seems right. The current incarnation of Citi is properly represented as the part of the tree that’s sucking all the nutrients out of the earth.
March 25th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Geneological trees are done w/ the oldest items at the top, and the newest at the bottom. It looks like a tree, hence the name.
March 25th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
It is also hollow, at this point, with old age, with fewer and fewer branches by the day.
The tree is situated on Old Lane, and is the home of a tramp named Pandit.
March 25th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Perhaps it is reverse genealogy tree, i.e. an orgy or a clusterf**k… THAT would be a very apt description…
HCF
March 25th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
It’s a bit like the tree we had cut down in our back yard a couple of years ago. Look great from the outside but in reality it was rotting from within. The tell-tale signs were the enormous branches falling off of it each time we had decent wind. I was very depressed when we had to chop that tree down. Aside from the $1,500 hit, it provided nice shade on summer afternoons and camoflouged the ugly power lines running to the house. In contrast, I will not be nearly as depressed when Citi’s tree is finally cut down.
March 25th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Does it include the dummy company they have set up as a shill to bid up the prices on the crap they will try to sell Geithner?
March 25th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Mike is hitting the 8 ring..
where are 100s of ‘off-balance sheet’ subsidiaries?
March 25th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
@Mike: No, that enterprise would be on the off-tree family tree.
March 25th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
this: http://bulkhandlingsystems.com/productcategory/60
though, to me, would have been a more effective metaphor..
too bad, for us, BHS is waay more productive..
March 25th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
@ bergsten
LOL. If I still had Adobe Photoshop on my computer with the right filter it’d take just a couple minutes to transform that tree into the swirl down through the outline of a toilet bowl. Maybe worth reinstalling.
March 25th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
You want upside down? Citi (and BofA) have been buying MBS’s, even as they try to off-load their toxic waste on the taxpayers. It just gets curiouser and curiouser.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/03252009/business/double_dippers_161157.htm
March 25th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
obviously a MUSHROOM CLOUD
March 25th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
The Curmudgeon @ 4:45
They’re not just buying them. They’re using taxpayer dollars to outbid hedge funds, who are competing for the same stuff. It’s like GM offering better financing than other car companies that didn’t get bailouts.
Ridiculous.
March 25th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
@DL…yeah, I saw that, too. Nice way to pretty up your balance sheet at the expense of the not TBTF. It is just one of many thousands of outrages, small and large, that obtain when “market” players have the power of the sovereign behind them. Expect the abuses to branch and multiply like the upside down Citi tree.
March 25th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Finally, a little bit of honesty from a politician. The president of the European Union described Obama’s stimulus package as the “way to hell.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/world/europe/26czech.html?_r=1&ref=business
March 25th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Mannwich, Are off-tree family tree entries the same as bastard children?
March 25th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Bernanke will never throw money out of helicopters because the common folks might get their hands on it.
Maybe over bank towers but not over middle class homes.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
What’s up with the comments section on the most recent post? In fact, what’s up with the post? Time to call tech support, BR. To quote the late, great Warren Zevon, “your shit’s fucked up.”
March 25th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
I like the inbred aspect to it, it clearly demonstrates what’s wrong with the picture. Whatever the case there are too many bank branches in my town and too many main offices.
March 25th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
get rid of this iscribe shit. let us download or fuck signing up.
March 25th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
when you see that nasty graph remember this…. price paid above book value goes to the balance sheet as goodwill which to me basically means citi is dead.
March 26th, 2009 at 5:25 am
The problem with this tree is that corporations don’t grow like trees at all, they grow more like the funguses that grow on dead trees. Think “The Blob” but with more structure.
March 26th, 2009 at 6:58 am
http://www.mercurynews.com/politics/ci_11996662?nclick_check=1
Voters cool to ballot measures to fix state budget
…No different than the national mood about the spending our government is doing…
March 26th, 2009 at 7:35 am
nice funnel shape to the tree. and the earlier poster was spot on. all thats missing is the swirling action.
March 26th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Oh, but Barry:
https://www.hangingtomato.com/?cid=486431
Upside down tomatoes “without all the work.”
March 26th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
I have another SHAM I want to bring to your attention. If you haven’t already heard CITI-fraud payed out $10.8 Million to its Chief Executive at a time when they were SUCKING you dry to the tune of $45 Billion!
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/pandit-lewis-diverge-strategy/story.aspx?guid={846BDDFC-37A5-4FD0-8888-D60E52FAED9F}&tool=1&dist=bigcharts&
Either purposely or incompetently The Resident cut a real bad deal for you the taxpayer already on Citi-fraud. Coincidence?
http://mcauleysworld.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/obamas-citi-group-move-crash-burns-obama-pays-premium-for-citi-stock-that-goes-bust/
Look who is movin on up to the Treasury! Coincidence? Citi-fraud top donor to The Resident’s Inaugeration.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123732747181462245.html
US of Citi-fraud, Coincidence??
http://www.americablog.com/2009/02/united-states-of-citibank.html
March 26th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
While most trees appear to be reaching for heaven, this one seems to be tunneling it’s way to hell.
March 26th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Lori,
keep that coming, these bounds: “Let’s look more carefully at his three regions.
1.) The sphere of legitimate debate is the one journalists recognize as real, normal, everyday terrain. They think of their work as taking place almost exclusively within this space. (It doesn’t, but they think so.) Hallin: “This is the region of electoral contests and legislative debates, of issues recognized as such by the major established actors of the American political process.”
Here the two-party system reigns, and the news agenda is what the people in power are likely to have on their agenda. Perhaps the purest expression of this sphere is Washington Week on PBS, where journalists discuss what the two-party system defines as “the issues.” Objectivity and balance are “the supreme journalistic virtues” for the panelists on Washington Week because when there is legitimate debate it’s hard to know where the truth lies. There are risks in saying that truth lies with one faction in the debate, as against another— even when it does. He said, she said journalism is like the bad seed of this sphere, but also a logical outcome of it.
2. ) The sphere of consensus is the “motherhood and apple pie” of politics, the things on which everyone is thought to agree…”
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2009/01/12/atomization.html
need to be stretched..