Citi bankers are wondering about the $45m loss and their bonuses

efinancialcareers.com:

If you're going to make a $45m loss on a block trade, December is probably not the time to do it. It's unfortunate, then, that this is what has occurred at Citi. 

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Bloomberg reported last week that, having undercut rivals to underwrite Australia's biggest block trade in seven years, Citi made the loss after it was unable to sell the block on again. Citi reportedly won the deal after negotiating a 1.4%-1.5% discount on the closing price, while other banks were requesting far greater discounts of 3.5%-4%. The loss was initially reported at $17m, but was revised to $45m one day later. It's not clear what it is now. 

With only three weeks to go until the end of the year, it's probably too late for Citi's equitycapital markets (ECM) bankers to make good the loss, leading to some trepidation about the impact on this year's bonus pool. Sources inside the bank suggest there are heated discussions about whose bonus pool the loss will be taken from. Rumours that an individual in Citi's Australian ECM business has already been let go are not true.

Citi isn't commenting on the issue. Our compensation survey earlier this year suggested that the average bonus at Citi fell 10% last year, implying that people there may have been hoping for some respite in 2024.

Citi's ECM revenues rose 22% year-on-year in the first nine months of 2024, to $474m. The unfortunate deal reportedly catapulted Citi from 12th to 1st for equity offerings in the Antipodes, a position historically occupied by Goldman Sachs and UBS.

The other question internally is understood to be the degree to which Citi's new banking bosses, Vis Raghavan and Achintya Mangla were involved in the unfortunate deal. Both men have