Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) will pay $425 million to resolve the charges that it attempted to manipulate benchmarks for interest rate products multiple times between 2007 and 2012. The charges were put forward by U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which announced on Wednesday that Citigroup will pay $250 million to settle the charges regarding ISDAfix, a global interest-rate benchmark, and $175 million to settle the alleged manipulation of London Interbank offered rate. In a statement, Citigroup’s spokeswoman said that the settlements is a significant step in the resolution of legacy benchmark investigations. She said that Citigroup has invested heavily to improve its controls and monitoring processes to avoid any inappropriate behavior.
Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) was in 101 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2016 and the company witnessed a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds of late, as there were 106 hedge funds in our database with holdings in Citigroup at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare Citigroup to other stocks, including Altria Group Inc (NYSE:MO), UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE:UNH), and HSBC Holdings plc (ADR) (NYSE:HSBC) to get a better sense of its popularity.
Follow Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C)
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According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Boykin Curry’s Eagle Capital Management has the biggest position in Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C), worth close to $1.0913 billion, accounting for 4.6% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Hound Partners, led by Jonathan Auerbach, holding a $572.4 million call position; the fund has 15.6% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish contain Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management, Robert Rodriguez and Steven Romick’s First Pacific Advisors LLC and Ric Dillon’s Diamond Hill Capital.
On the next page, we are going to present some more smart money activity surrounding Citigroup’s stock.
Due to the fact that Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) has experienced falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, we can see that there was a specific group of hedgies that slashed their positions entirely last quarter. Interestingly, Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management said goodbye to the largest investment of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, comprising about $232 million in stock, and Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $221.1 million worth. These moves are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 5 funds last quarter.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C). We will take a look at Altria Group Inc (NYSE:MO), UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE:UNH), HSBC Holdings plc (ADR) (NYSE:HSBC), and PetroChina Company Limited (ADR) (NYSE:PTR). This group of stocks’ market valuations match C’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| MO | 41 | 1759366 | -1 |
| UNH | 50 | 2983246 | 0 |
| HSBC | 14 | 490616 | 6 |
| PTR | 13 | 29548 | 5 |
As you can see these stocks had an average of 30 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1316 million. That figure was $8036 million in C’s case. UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE:UNH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand PetroChina Company Limited (ADR) (NYSE:PTR) is the least popular one with only 13 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) is more popular among hedge funds. Considering that hedge funds are fond of this stock in relation to its market cap peers, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and potentially include it in your portfolio.
Disclosure: None
