The American bank Citigroup, one of the financial organizations in the world most affected by the crisis, decided to split its business into two parts - Citicorp and Citi Holdings. This is stated in the official press release published on the Citigroup website.

Simultaneously with this decision, Citigroup announced losses in the fourth quarter of 2008. During the period October-December last year, the bank lost $8.29 billion. For all of last year, Citigroup's net loss was $18.72 billion.

On January 14, The Wall Street Journal, citing its source at Citigroup , reported that the group plans to reduce its business by a third to avoid bankruptcy. In particular, the bank intended to close part of its consumer lending divisions and the department for issuing credit cards for stores.

Earlier on January 14, Citigroup also agreed with the former investment bank Morgan Stanley to create a joint venture (JV) to manage its own assets. The JV from Citigroup will include the brokerage company Smith Barney. Both organizations estimate cost savings from the new division at $1.1 billion.

Citigroup, which was the largest U.S. bank by assets before the global financial crisis, lost nearly 90 percent of its capitalization in 2008. To reduce costs and attract additional funds, the organization closed some of its Japanese divisions, sold the German branch of Citigroup Privatkunden and the trust bank NikkoCiti Trust & Banking.

On January 16, another large US bank, Bank of America, also announced a loss for the fourth quarter of last year. They reached $1.79 billion. The organization reported losses for the first time since 1991, Bloomberg notes.

Citigroup will split into two parts