Citigroup warned its third-quarter net income will drop 60 per cent on turmoil in the subprime and leveraged loan markets, as well as weakness in its consumer business.
CEO Charles Prince, who called the results "a clear disappointment" said the decline had been driven "by weak performance in fixed-income credit market activities, write-downs in leveraged loan commitments, and increases in consumer credit costs."
Among the principal culprits for the warning were $1.4 billion in pre-tax write-downs on funded and unfunded leveraged loan commitments.
Citi also said it was taking $1.3 billion in pretax losses on the value of subprime mortgage-backed securities it had warehoused to repackage into collateralised debt obligations, and leveraged loans it had planned to repackage into collateralised loan obligation securitisations.
"I think people are expecting there were some losers in the whole subprime (sector) and that not all of the bad news had come out yet. Now, for some of the banks, it's probably worse than people thought it would be," said Rick Meckler, president of investment firm LibertyView Capital Management, in Jersey City, New Jersey.
The profit warning came on the same day that Swiss bank UBS AG, the world's largest wealth manager, unveiled $3.4 billion in losses, swept out senior managers and slashed jobs.