Citi Buys Highway After Exiting Road to Ruin

A Citi spokesman in London declined to comment further on the Itinere deal.

Citi CFO Gary Crittenden said in a recent interview with Business Week that the company has so far cut $300 billion of "relatively low-returning assets." Still, Crittenden defended Citi's decision to keep its universal banking model intact, noting how "monoline" finance companies like mortgage lenders, consumer finance firms and investment banks "have morphed one by one to have deposit funding."

"[Y]ou have to ask yourself a very sober question about splitting up Citi: If we spun off a standalone wholesale business, would it have the ability to fund itself wholesale in today's environment?" asked Crittenden. "The universal bank model also is the predominant model in the developing world. We think about options and alternatives in the context of the fundamental strategy that [CEO] Vikram Pandit laid out."

As Citi's stock price plunged 60% in one week last month, Citi was rumored to be considering auctioning off pieces of the company or a sale.

The bailout was a dramatic change in events for Citi, which just last month was engaged in a bitter legal battle over the ownership of Wachovia (WB Quote). Citi had agreed to purchase Wachovia's banking operations, with federal assistance to offset anticipated losses in the Charlotte lender's portfolio. But Wells Fargo (WFC Quote) swooped in with a better offer, one that did not require federal assistance, to seal a deal for Wachovia.

Crittenden didn't address the possibility of a sale of one of Citi's businesses.