Citigroup’s Efforts Pay Off, Treasury Sells Its Stake

Another day, another successful government stock offering.

Citigroup has outperformed most other major U.S. bank in the last three months.

Less than a month after the enormous General Motors IPO, the U.S. Treasury gave Citigroup (NYSE: C) its independence back by selling the last of its stake in the bank on Monday.

That’s great news for Citi which has been itching to operate on its own again, but even better news for taxpayers who thought they’d never get back the $45 billion in bailout money that was handed to Citi two years ago.

Not only will the government get its money back but the U.S. Treasury says Monday’s public offering should allow it to realize a profit of $12 billion on its overall investment.

The sale of 2.4 billion shares of Citi common stock which were priced at $4.35 a share brought in about $10.5 billion.

Executives at Citi including CEO Vikram Pandit have been working diligently to get the bank back on track. Much effort is exhausted on getting rid of whatever is still left in Citi Holdings- the unit that houses all of the bank’s unwanted assets from the financial crisis. The bank says it expects Citi Holdings to have less than $400 billion in assets by the end of year, or less than 20% of the bank’s total assets.

Much of the bank’s good news is occurring overseas. These days Citi’s strength is in its consumer banking units especially those in emerging markets-revenues in Latin America and Asia were up 13% and 7% in the third quarter respectively from a year ago.

Last month, Manuel Madina Mora Citi’s CEO of Consumer Banking for the Americas and Chairman of Citi’s Global Consumer Council said the bank operates in 120 of 150 emerging cities that represent 30% of world GDP. He added that Citi will focus on affluent households in those cities and also utilize its credit card for the mass affluent population in those cities.

In a note about Citi last month, analyst Dick Bove says:

“The history of Citigroup shows that when the company focuses on international retail consumer banking and improved technology it does well. When it diverges from this path to lend to countries, or make acquisitions with little complimentary characteristics it gets into a great deal of trouble.”

He goes on to say that the company is moving in the right direction and that “results should be very positive.”

Positive indeed. Since December 1, Citi shares are up nearly 6% to $4.45 on Monday’s close.. Just last week Oppenheimer analyst Chris Kotowski said the company was worth more than $5 a share-that’s a level the company’s shares haven’t reached in nearly two years.

In fact, Citi shares have outperformed most other major U.S. bank by a wide margin since September. Since September 1, Citi is up 20% while JPMorgan is up 10%, Morgan Stanley is up 4% and Bank of America is down over 6.6%.

It wasn’t long ago that Citi shares were trading under $1. Today though, Pandit and pals got their bank back from the government. The plan is the Treasury will never have to come back.

Google unveils Nexus S phone & Gingerbread OS

California, Dec 7: The internet giant Google Inc has announced the launch of its latest smartphone, Nexus S, and the new version of its popular Android smartphone operating system, Gingerbread.

The new Google Nexus S smartphone is manufactured by world's second largest mobile phone maker, Samsung. The new phone offers unique feature, Near Field Communication, which helps users to make a payment by waving a device over an electronic reader.

The Nexus S smartphone runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS and is powered by 1 GHz Hummingbird processor. It comes with a massive 4-inch WVGA touchscreen display and a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash. The front facing VGA camera offers video calling facility.

This new phone offers 512 MB RAM and 16GB internal memory with micro SD support upto 32 GB. The new Gingerbread OS makes this phone one of the fastest device in the handset market.

Other features include Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi, Internet Calling and copy-and-paste functions.

Nexus S Specifications:

* 4.0 inch WVGA (800 x 480) touchscreen display

Google to launch e-book store

Google to launch e-book store.Google to launch e-book store

Google hopes to write itself a substantial chapter in the digital books story with the launch of its own store.

Google eBooks, formerly known as Google Editions, launches in the US on 6 December.

It will allow users to download three million e-books to a range of devices.

It will put it head-to -head with Amazon, which links its Kindle device to its own store, and Apple with its iBookstore.

Library fears

The launch of the service has been delayed, due to legal and technical wrangles.

But Google is hopeful that its "device agnostic" store will rewrite the current generation of digital books.

"It benefits authors because they will be able to be more visible and more accessible than with the physical constraints of a book store," said Santiago de la Mora, director of books at Google.

"It will also be good for publishers who will be able to promote backlist titles," he added.

James McQuivey, an analyst with research firm Forrester, predicts Google could become an important player in the market.

"It is sitting on information that no-one else has. It knows when you are searching for authors and what book titles and that is its biggest strength," he said.

"It may not lure people away from the Kindle but there are tens of millions of people who read but don't own a Kindle," he added.

According to Forrester, 10.3 million e-readers were sold in the US during 2010, not including the iPad. It predicts that by the end of 2010, the e-book market will be worth $966m (£615m).

Google does not have an unblemished record when it comes to digital books.

Its work to scan millions of books has courted huge controversy from critics who were concerned that it could become the sole curator of a huge online library.

It has been fighting a two-year legal battle with authors and publishers in the US.

It has agreed to set up a Books Rights Registry through which authors could register their works and get compensation but no ruling from the US court looking at the case has yet been handed out.

Google's ability to offer users access to classic literature could boost its eBook project, thinks Mr McQuivey.

"If you can read Les Miserables for free using Google's system it is a way to lure people in and whet their appetite for e-reading," he said.

He expects the e-reading market to nearly double in size in 2011.

Google's eBook service is expected to launch in Europe in 2011.

New Facebook [SCREENSHOTS]

Well, that was fast! The new Facebook Profile Pages are now available to try out — Facebook has just heralded their arrival via Twitter, mere hours before founder Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance on 60 Minutes.

Galaxy Tab sales soar past 1 million mark, Samsung says

Samsung Galaxy Tab continues to pick up sales momentum.

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In late November, Samsung said it had sold 600,000 Galaxy Tab units worldwide. This week, the company announced it had sold upwards of a million Galaxy Tabs – and again predicted that it would hit the 1.5 million-unit-sold mark by the beginning of next year.

The Galaxy Tab is currently available on 120 carriers in 64 countries, including France, the UK, and the US.

The device has earned solid marks from reviewers, despite its 7-inch screen, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs once publicly derided as too small for most users. In a positive review of the Galaxy Tab in the New York Times, David Pogue noted that "Samsung sweated the details on this thing. The screen is gorgeous. The touch response is immediate and reliable. The whole thing is superfast and a pleasure to use."

Four carriers in the US offer the Galaxy Tab, including Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint. AT&T was the most recent carrier to begin selling the Galaxy Tab; the AT&T edition comes unlocked, and users do not have to sign a service contract. AT&T also offers the cheapest monthly data plan, at $15 for 250MB. By comparison, T-Mobile charges $25 for 200MB of data per month, but sells the Tab for the subsidized price of $400, providing you enter into a contract.

So is a million units sold a big deal for the Galaxy Tab? Absolutely. But Samsung still lags far behind Apple, which has reportedly sold upwards of 7 million iPads since the launch of that device in April. Meanwhile, rumors continue to percolate that Apple is preparing an iPad 2 – complete with a pair of cameras and a USB port – which would do a whole lot to steal the thunder from Samsung and its Galaxy Tab.

Groupon Aims to Emulate Facebook, Not Yahoo, After Google Deal Fizzles.

Groupon Inc., which rejected a Google Inc. takeover last week, is betting it can keep increasing its valuation after walking away from a deep-pocketed suitor, something Facebook Inc. pulled off and Yahoo! Inc. failed to do.

Groupon, the Chicago-based provider of online coupons, spurned an offer of as much as $6 billion that included performance incentives, a person familiar with the matter said last week. The startup will decide next year whether to go the route of an initial public offering instead, the person said.

Internet executives have had mixed results in refusing billion-dollar takeover offers. Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang was head of the Web-portal company when Microsoft Corp. tried to buy it for $47.5 billion in 2008. After rejecting the deal, Yahoo saw its valuation cut in half and Yang was replaced as CEO. At Facebook, founder Mark Zuckerberg turned down a $1 billion offer from Yahoo in 2006. Less than five years later, the social- networking service is valued at more than 40 times that.

“It is very common for all executives -- entrepreneurs or executives of public companies, to drink their own Kool-Aid and believe their own hype,” said Lou Kerner, a social-media analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc. in New York. “When everything is going up and to the right, it’s hard to have appreciation for the risks that are apparent in any business.”

Strategic Differences

Groupon Chief Executive Officer Andrew Mason, who started the company in 2008, had concerns about the strategic direction it would take under new management and what could happen to his employees if he sold to Google, according to a person familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified because the discussions were private.

Groupon has attracted 35 million users in more than 300 global markets by offering discounts of as much as 90 percent on everything from massages to ski tickets. The company makes money by keeping part of the revenue raised by the coupons. Groupon’s sales may top $500 million this year, two people familiar with the matter have said.

When Facebook declined Yahoo’s offer, Zuckerberg’s site had fewer than 12 million users. It now boasts more than 500 million. The Palo Alto, California-based company is worth more than $43 billion, according to SharesPost Inc., which tracks privately held businesses.

Yahoo, by contrast, has gone in the other direction. Even under a turnaround effort by Carol Bartz, the Sunnyvale, California-based company has struggled to revive growth and keep users from defecting to Google and social-networking sites. Its market value is now $21.3 billion.

Apple and Sun

Apple Inc., the world’s most valuable technology company, had its own near-miss takeover. The company held merger talks with Sun Microsystems Inc. in the 1990s, before CEO Steve Jobs returned to Apple and revamped its product line.

Twitter Inc., the microblogging site that lets users send messages of 140 characters, was in talks to be acquired by Google in 2009, the technology blog TechCrunch reported at the time. Twitter had recently raised funding valuing it at $250 million. The company is now considering a new investment round that would put its worth at more than $3 billion, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Other technology startups have opted not to sell in the past year, turning instead to outside investors. Small-business review site Yelp Inc. declined a $500 million offer from Google and took an investment of $100 million from private-equity firm Elevation Partners LP.

Foursquare Offer

Foursquare Labs Inc. turned down a $100 million bid from Yahoo, according to the All Things Digital blog. Instead, it raised $20 million in June from investors led by Andreessen Horowitz LLC.

In contrast, MySpace and Bebo, two of Facebook’s rivals in the social-networking market, both sold out to larger companies -- earning big paydays before their value declined.

News Corp. bought MySpace as part of its $580 million acquisition of Intermix in 2005. It later had to write down the value of the investment amid an exodus of users to Facebook. AOL Inc. bought Bebo for $850 million in 2008, and then sold it for less than $10 million this year.

“Life is all about timing and it’s hard to pick the perfect point to sell,” Kerner said. “Sometimes it’s better to sell too early than too late.”

Facebook Redesigns Profile Pages

Facebook Redesigns Profile Pages

Opts for a more visual centric design

Facebook has been busy lately acquiring promising start-ups, poaching Google exployees, launching Facebook Places and otherwise tweaking and redesigning elements of its bread and butter social networking platform. After the initial build up, the official blog has announced new and redesigned profile pages for Facebook. The redesign will be automatically applied Facebook wide in the coming weeks, but if you're the impatient kind and want to be an early adopter, follow these steps to unlock the new Facebook profile:

• Browse over to this page.
• Hit the green button at the top right.
• Revel in the latest redesign of your profile page.

Revisions to the profile page include a summary listing of personal information right below the user name at the top of the page. It carries information on user's employment, hometown, college details, relationship status, languages spoken and birth date. This will be followed by a filmstrip of recently tagged photos placed directly below. Overall, a greater emphasis on photos is apparent with the new design.

According to the blog, you can now "highlight the friends who are important to you, such as your family, best friends or teammates". These featured friends will be displayed at the left hand side and come with the ability to incorporate new friend groups or existing friends lists. Interests and activities carry increased focus on the profile pages.

Another major diversion is a lack of a ready text field to enter new status updates. The new design incorporates different content sensitive buttons to post status updates, photos, links and videos to your profile. I find that this speeds up the process as earlier one would have to wait for the icons to show up after clicking on the text field.

Finally, the new profile adds new ways to share interests and activities. The official blog elaborates, "You can list the projects you worked on at your job, classes you took in school, your favourite musicians and sports teams, and more." It also adds a Philosophy section where one can also share their life philosophy by incorporating preferences on religions, political affiliations, in addition to your role models. Interests and experiences are now represented with images in keeping with the visual centric theme of the new profile.

Do you like the refreshed profile page? Leave us a comment and let us know.