Bloomberg reports:
Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit faces an “impossible feat” in turning around the biggest U.S. bank as it faces “seismic” costs to restructure, Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Meredith Whitney said.
Citigroup will be forced to announce the sale of major businesses toward the end of this year or in early 2009, Whitney, who recommends investors sell the shares, said in a Bloomberg TV interview today.
Whitney’s call sounds vaguely familiar. On March 17, she sounded a similar warning:
Meredith Whitney, the Wall Street analyst who received death threats after writing a negative report about Citigroup, has predicted that financial stocks could plummet by as much as half in the wake of the Bear Stearns fire sale.
In a note released today, the Oppenheimer analyst says Merrill Lynch, UBS and Citigroup will be the worst hit.
In fact, that same day she told CNBC that, “the stocks after tomorrow [3/18/08] will be trading down again,” suggesting that they were as much as 50% from making a bottom. (Click the picture for a link to the video):
Her wrong-way, March 17 call marked THE bottom for not only Citigroup but the entire financial sector.
The fact that she not only refuses to recognize her mistake but continues to push this losing trade sounds to me like she’s fighting – a cardinal sin in the mind of every good trader.
Sources:
Citi’s Pandit Faces `Impossible Feat,’ Whitney Says
Margaret Popper and Josh Fineman
Bloomberg
Meredith Whitney warns of 50% fall in US bank shares
Catherine Boyle
The Times