“The board presently has 15 directors, three of whom have announced that they will not be standing for election at the April annual meeting and two of whom will reach retirement age by the time of the meeting. We are actively conducting a search and expect to announce several new directors shortly."

The fate of Citi, which has booked billions of dollars of write-downs from the credit crunch, and has agreed to spin off its Smith Barney wealth advisory business to Morgan Stanley, continued to hang in the balance. The US government has agreed to a third rescue attempt that will cut existing shareholders’ stake in the firm by 74 per cent. Shares in Citi fell sharply on Friday.

The Treasury Department agreed to convert as much as $25 billion of preferred shares into common stock as long as private holders agree to the same terms, the government said in a statement last week. The US government does not immediately intend to inject additional money after channelling $45 billion to the New York-based company last year.

In another statement last Friday, Citi said it recorded a pre-tax goodwill impairment charge of about $9.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Citi had previously announced in its fourth quarter earnings press release on 16 January that it was continuing to review its goodwill to determine whether a goodwill impairment had occurred as of 31 December, 2008, and that charge is the result of that review and testing.

The goodwill impairment charge was recorded in North America Consumer Banking, Latin America Consumer Banking, and EMEA Consumer Banking, and resulted in a write-off of the entire amount of goodwill allocated to those reporting units.