Courtesy of Lawrence Delevingne of Business Insider
While most world governments have lost money when forced to take direct stakes in banks’ common shares, the U.S. government is actually a big winner.
We the taxpayers are up $11 billion on our 34% stake in Citi (C), which is technically the only bank we have a direct stake in:
FT: The US authorities received more than 7bn shares in the troubled financial group at $3.25 apiece, after converting $25bn of preferred stock into common equity at the end of last month.
Since then, Citi’s shares have rallied, and closed on Friday at $4.70, increasing the value of the government’s stake by $11bn. That more than offsets the paper losses of all the other significant state interventions in listed banks – in the UK, Germany, the Benelux and France.
