Citi profit: Mouth of a gift horse

Citigroup has finally made some money again. After five quarters of posting multi-billion dollar losses and requiring two capital injections and a partial government guarantee on some $300bn of assets, that’s a welcome relief – not least to embattled chief Vikram Pandit. But the $1.6bn profit the troubled megabank posted for the first three months of the year is not as good as it looks. First, it’s barely enough to cover $1.3bn in dividend payments to preferred stockholders, including the US Tr...