Bloomberg - Evening Briefing - Citi's 20,000 job cuts

Citigroup said it will eliminate 20,000 roles in a move that will save it as much as $2.5 billion as part of Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser’s quest to boost the Wall Street giant’s lagging returns. Firmwide expenses are expected to drop to an annual range of $51 billion to $53 billion over the medium-term, Citigroup said. In the meantime, though, the firm expects to incur as much as $1 billion in expenses tied to severance payments and Fraser’s broader overhaul of the bank. The outlook for cost savings helped mask a disappointing fourth quarter, when Citigroup’s fixed-income traders turned in their worst performance in five years. Revenue from the business slumped 25% to $2.6 billion. —Natasha Solo-Lyons

For all the pain the Federal Reserve’s rapid rate hikes caused for many regional lenders, it was a boon for the biggest banks. In 2023, the four giants raked in $253 billion in net-interest income — the difference between what it earns on its assets and what it pays on its debts — about $80 billion higher than 2021’s total. Now, most banks see rate cuts coming, all while they have to pay more on deposits or risk losing customer savings to higher-yielding options.

The US Federal Aviation Administration said it will increase its oversight of Boeing’s production and manufacturing operations, a day after it opened a formal investigation into the planemaker over last week’s accident on a 737 Max 9 jet.

JPMorgan just made more annual profit than any lender in the history of US banking. Its $9.3 billion of net income in the fourth quarter of 2023 means the biggest US bank earned $49.6 billion for the year, up 32% from 2022 and topping a record $48.3 billion from 2021.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. signage on floor of the New York Stock Exchange.  Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

Wall Street’s largest banks are poised to barrel into the US corporate bond market as earning season kicks off, spurred to sell new debt by looming maturities and tougher regulatory requirements. Major US banks are expected to sell between $30 billion and $34 billion of new bonds in January once they report fourth-quarter results, according to JPMorgan credit strategists. That compares with a historical average of $26 billion for the month, according to an analysis of sales from 2014 to 2023.

Bill Ackman slammed the performance of Harvard University’s endowment and he’s forming a think tank to continue his scrutiny of US education, he said in a wide-ranging interview Friday on CNBC. The billionaire investor, who helped lead a public charge to remove former Harvard President Claudine Gay, criticized the returns of the college’s endowment, which he says has trailed the market. 

Bill Ackman. Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg

BlackRock agreed to buy Adebayo Ogunlesi’s Global Infrastructure Partners for about $12.5 billion, vaulting the world’s biggest money manager into the top ranks of investors that make long-term bets on energy, transportation and digital infrastructure.

Some of the most-influential investors are giving the world’s largest private equity firms a message: if you want money for your next fund, here’s our list of demands. Sovereign wealth funds and state pension providers are among investors telling money managers they’ll only commit in their upcoming fund raises if their capital tied up in old funds is released, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

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• Bloomberg Opinion: Slower for longer — inflation has stopped falling.
• $77,000 a month rental shows depth of Hong Kong's luxury downturn.

It just got a whole lot easier to invest in Bitcoin. After years of anticipation, the first US exchange-traded funds that invest directly in the biggest cryptocurrency have begun trading. Billions of dollars changed hands Thursday and the token briefly surged past $49,000 following the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s decision to grant them approval after markets closed on Wednesday. How do you get some of the action? And what are the pros and cons? Here’s what you need to know.

A Casascius physical bitcoin token. Photographer: Milan Jaros/Bloomberg

The Evening Briefing will return on Tuesday, Jan. 16.

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