Citigroup suffers 57% profit fall

Citigroup said today its third-quarter profit dropped 57 per cent.

Citigroup said today its third-quarter profit dropped 57 per cent.

Citigroup, which boosted loan-loss provisions by $2.24 billion, said net income fell to $2.38 billion, or 47 cents per share, in the July to September period.

That's down from $5.51 billion, or $1.10 a share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue in the quarter rose 6 per cent to $22.66 billion from $21.42 billion a year earlier.

The biggest US bank took a hit of more than $3 billion in mortgage-backed security losses, leveraged debt write-downs, and fixed-income trading losses.

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The results included a $729 million pretax gain due to the sale of shares of Redecard, a company that signs up merchants in Brazil for Mastercard.

The results were slightly better than Citigroup previously estimated. On October 1st, Citigroup. had warned that its third-quarter profit would fall by about 60 per cent.

Citigroup's shares rose in pre-market trading, after closing at $47.87 Friday. It has fallen more than 6 per cent since the start of July and is down more than 12 per cent year-to-date.