Insane mega merger..

Another interesting merger emerged on NY Times business session. Citigroup is buying Wachovias branches of banks, making Citigroup into even a bigger giant only to be rivaled by two other banks in the U.S; Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase.

Apparently the value of deal is not disclosed, but Citi is taking over 42 billion USD (equal to ~ 240 billion SEK) out of Wachovias bad debt pool of 312 billion USD. Insurance from the FED is also acquired for 12 billion USD of preferred shares. On the upside, Citi gets a hold of Wachovias "good" debt as well - which amounts to 400 billion USD.

In comparison the banks involved in the Swedish banking crisis lost approx. 180 billion SEK (about 60 billion USD). How much is a billion USD? if you stack the quarters on top of each other, the stack would go to the moon...