Citigroup Posts $5.1 Billion Loss

Citigroup Inc. said it lost $5.1 billion during the first quarter as poor bets on mortgages and leveraged loans lopped billions of dollars from its investment portfolio.

Write-downs related to mortgages and turmoil in the credit markets reached about $12 billion.

The most recent quarterly shortfall at the nation’s biggest bank by assets is not as massive as the nearly $10 billion loss it suffered in the fourth quarter of last year.

Shares of Citigroup rose in pre-market trading and helped pull other stock futures higher, as many investors had been bracing for even more dismal results.

However, Citigroup’s loss of $1.02 per share is in sharp contrast to its profit of $5 billion, or $1.01 per share, in the first three months of 2007. And analysts, on average, had expected the New York- based bank to lose 95 cents per share, according to a Thomson Financial survey.

Citigroup said that before taxes, it took $6 billion in write- downs and credit costs on exposure to sub-prime mortgages; $3.1 billion in write-downs on funded and unfunded highly leveraged finance commitments; a downward credit value adjustment of $1.5 billion related to exposure to bond insurers; $1.5 billion in write- downs on auction-rate securities; and a $3.1 billion rise in credit costs for consumers around the world.