CIT, the lender to small businesses, managed to a squeeze a few nickels out of its own lenders in order to stave off bankruptcy late Sunday night. The beleaguered lender secured $3 billion from its bondholders at a steep price, roughly 10% over LIBOR, and will secure the funds with its highest-quality loans.

The FT reports that Citigroup is close to a secret agreement with one of its main regulators that will increase scrutiny of the US bank and force it to fix financial (like those involving losing buckets of money), managerial (such as the fact that management caused and now can't stop the firm from losing buckets of money) and governance (such as those concerning directors that did nothing other than rubber stamp everything that management did causing the firm to lose buckets of money) issues.

Citi and Bank of America are not happy with the results of the government-mandated stress tests, which will force them to raise significant amounts of new capital.

A federal grand jury in San Francisco returned a 38 count indictment against three Bay Area defendants charging securities fraud and conspiracy relating to an insider trading scheme in which the defendants made profits in excess of $5.3 million, United States Attorney Joseph P. Russoniello announced.

This morning in an announcement for its investors Citigroup authorizes the board to execute reverse stock split of its common stock. With the government being a major shareholder in Citi and assuming that a maximum amount of stocks go to reverse stock split existing common shareholders would see their holdings diluted by nearly 75%, with the government becoming the largest holder at 36%, reports Dow Jones Newswire.

Today is a day in the U.S. stock markets that many investors and market analysts were waiting for a long time. The markets are back from mult-year lows Dow Jones and Nasdaq are recovering with a strong force. Financial stocks and the industry that have started this economic downturn contributed to the recovery. What went right today?

It used to be that after a particular stock dropped into the single digits, investors just stopped caring. The company was delisted from its corresponding exchange and relegated to the indignity of trading on the pink sheets. Then, maybe seven years later, some headline declaring the company's bankruptcy would hit, you'd scratch your head and say "Hmmm. Didn't that stock used to trade at $70? I can't believe it took them this long to go bankrupt" (i.e. Lucent).

Richard Parsons, Chairman of the Board, Citi (NYSE: C), today issued the following statement.

Citi to Exchange Preferred Securities for Common, Increasing Tangible Common Equity to as Much as $81 Billion.

Citi's announcement results in additional net loss of $9.0 billion for 2008.

U.S. Treasury is taking a huge step in controlling up to 36 percent of Citigroup shifting preferred shares to common stock and thus strengthening bank's capital base.

At the urging of Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup all announced temporary halts on foreclosures Friday.