Here’s a test that Wall Street can sleep through.
The results of Thursday’s stress test from the Federal Reserve could include a “false positive” for Citigroup CEO Mike Corbat, whose job hangs in the balance if the central bank doesn’t approve his plan to increase its profit-sharing plans, Mike Mayo, analyst at CLSA, told The Post.
The results of the Fed’s stress test come in two parts — a quantitative review of capital ratios on Thursday after the market close, and a more in-depth dive into the largest banks, including JPMorgan and Bank of America, that comes out March 11.
That second review, called the comprehensive capital analysis and review, or CCAR, is make-or-break for Citi’s CEO Corbat, who didn’t convince regulators that his bank had a good enough risk-assessment policy last stress test, Mayo said.
“We’re six days away from finding out whether the CEO of Citigroup has a job,” said Mayo, who is including a countdown to March 11 on his notes to investors.
Citigroup, the third-largest bank by assets, has had a $0.01 dividend since January 2009, and has been trying to sell off assets and retool its risk assessment in order to get regulators to sign off on its plan to return more capital to shareholders.
Should the global bank pass the Fed’s CCAR, it could increase its dividend to 10 to 15 cents and repurchase as much as $7 billion in shares, according to a report by Marty Mosby, analyst at Vining Sparks.
The Fed’s stress tests have been controversial on Wall Street — they’re closely watched as a proxy for how banks would perform during a market downturn.
While the tests are designed to make banks more “prudential,” the parameters of the test aren’t shared with the banks, said Ernie Patrikis, partner at White & Case, who spent 30 years at the New York Fed.
“There’s some ‘gotcha,’ ” Patrikis said. “I don’t like the Fed governors telling a company’s directors what their dividend should be.”