Citigroup Steers Into Recovery, With Others’ Hands on the Wheel<br />If the tax law had been in effect last year, the 9.6 percent return on tangible common equity Citigroup just reported for the year would have risen above 10 percent — already beating his target for 2018,<br />and suggesting that Mr. Corbat can be more ambitious.<br />Mr. Corbat warned last year that the cost of writing down unrecoverable loans was going to rise a little more than expected,<br />and credit losses on its North American own-brand card business rose 10 percent in the quarter.<br />The $203 billion lender took a $22 billion charge in the last quarter of 2017 as it wrote down deferred tax assets — credits against future tax bills —<br />and took a hit for deemed repatriation of overseas earnings.<br />Citigroup is still a passenger in some important ways — rate setters will decide what happens to the yield on<br />its $1.8 trillion in assets, while regulators must still sign off on future cash returns to shareholders.<br />If consumers and small businesses feel richer, as its rival JPMorgan Chase said last week they probably will, a beneficiary<br />should be a company like Citigroup, which makes roughly one-quarter of its revenue from credit cards.
