How big is Citigroup, again?

Robert Reich has written a remarkable piece, Why CitiGroup is About to Be Bailed Out and Not General Motors. (I believe that should be “Citigroup”, not “CitiGroup”. Please forgive my mild OCD.)

Viewed from Wall Street, Citi is too big and important to be allowed to fail while GM is simply a big, clunky old […]

How big is Citadel?

I wish I could tell you. It is not a public company, so they do not report their financial data to the SEC. All I can find is the blurb on their Web site:

In 1990, one year after graduation, Griffin launched Citadel with $4.6 million in investment capital. Today, Citadel deploys more than $20 […]

How big is NatCity?

Continuing the series…

National City Corporation has $154 billion in assets, $101 billion in deposits, and $136 billion in total liabilities. So you can think of it as five IndyMacs or half a WaMu.

NatCity is counterparty to $23 billion in derivatives used as hedges (page 53); this is essentially just insurance they have purchased […]

How big is Morgan Stanley? Goldman Sachs? Wachovia?

Fourth installment in the series, and one I never expected to write. Well, except maybe for Wachovia.

Morgan Stanley has $1.03 trillion in assets and $997 billion in liabilities. They are counterparty to $10.6 trillion in derivatives trades (page 103, sum of “Beneficiary” and “Guarantor” amounts).

Goldman Sachs has $1.09 trillion in assets and $1.04 […]

How big is Bank of America? Citigroup? J.P. Morgan?

Third installment in the series. I was just curious; I suspect the U.S. government would be allowed to fail before these would.

It is hard to say which historical parallels apply, because these entities are both very large FDIC-insured depository institutions and also very large derivatives traders. So it is not clear whether the right […]

How big is Lehman? Merrill? AIG?

Second installment in the series. Also the last, I hope.

In 1998, Long-Term Capital Management nearly collapsed. They had $129 billion in assets and $124 billion in liabilities. But the real problem was that they were counterparty to $1.25 trillion in derivatives trades. Because their collapse might have created a chain-reaction throughout the financial system, […]

How big is WaMu?

The largest bank failure in U.S. history was Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company. When it failed in May 1984, it had $41 billion in assets and $30 billion in total deposits.

According to the FDIC press release, when IndyMac failed in July it had $32 billion in assets and $19 billion in deposits, […]