Evans joins Citi as subprime losses mount

Citi yesterday announced that it had hired Richard Evans as chief risk officer for its institutional clients group.

Evans joins from Deutsche Bank, where he was deputy chief risk officer. In his new role, he will report to Citi chief risk officer Brian Leach.

The news came just before the bank's announcement today of a first-quarter net loss of $5.1 billion. The numbers were adversely affected by significant writedowns in the fixed-income sector.

Chief among those was a $6 billion writedown on subprime-related exposures, although there were also writedowns of $3.1 billion for leveraged loans and $1.5 billion writedowns on monoline exposure, as well as $1.5 billion for outstanding unsold auction rate securities.

In addition, the alternative investment division reported losses of $358 million, which the bank said was "primarily due to the impact of market disruption on proprietary investments in hedge funds and structured investment vehicle assets".

On the back of the loss, Fitch Ratings today downgraded Citi’s long-term issuer default rating to AA- from AA, with a negative rating outlook. “Fitch may downgrade Citi further if sizeable bottom-line losses persist and capital falls below targeted levels,” said the rating agency. “On the other hand, if overall financial performance returns to profitable levels and asset-quality problems begin to stabilize, Fitch may revise Citi's rating outlook to stable.”

See also: Deutsche appoints group treasurers
Citi appoints new chief risk officer

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