A survival question for Citibank

Citigroup is too big to fail, you must be kidding... Not anymore.

Amidst the fray of failing banks Citibank may be the biggest addition. From being the world's biggest bank about a year and a half ago, today Citibank has serious threats of solvency. This is reflected in its stock price which has plummeted from about $30 per share to about $4 per share. Citibank was under the speculators radar since Vikram Pandit had replaced Chuck as the leader. But with the bank losing Wachovia Corp. deal to Wells Fargo & Co., the negatives started outweighing. And with the continuing losses of billions of dollar every quarter, the stock price saw a sharp decline of about 60% in last week amid speculations of a possible takeover or merger.

Citibank is one of the biggest banks of the world and employs more than 350,000 people. It reduced its workforce by 11,000 in the latest quarter ending September 2008. It has a customer base of more than 200 million and operations in close to 140 countries. Citibank's total assets declined by $50 billion in this quarter, thats 13% decline to 2,050 billion dollars. The question is that with accumulated losses every quarter and a large amount of risky assets still in the bank's portfolio, isn't the future shaky for Citi?

Speculation is that US government is working on a plan to rescue the bank. It will be a tough task ahead for the government to bail out the giant (though not so giant anymore).