Citigroup, which has taken billions from taxpayers and slashed thousands of jobs, is now killing the holiday train exhibit at the Citigroup Center. The free exhibit, which first appeared some 21 years ago, typically gets about 125,000 visitors a year. Effective January 2, 2009, Citigroup will no longer sponsor the exhibit. The move is being made so that Citigroup can save a whopping $240,000 a year, according to a Bloomberg story. If I had a vote, I’d just ax another executive and keep the train exhibit. But that’s me. In the meantime, when the kids ask what happened to the exhibit, we’ll just tell them that Citigroup sucks. From the Bloomberg story:“I think it’s a pretty serious mistake on the part of Citi,” said Dunham, 72, a Tony-award nominated Broadway set designer who started building model railroads professionally in the 1980s. “It’s money well spent. This is the cheapest form of advertising.”Among major U.S. banks, Citigroup is the hardest-hit by the credit crisis that pushed the country into recession. Writedowns on mortgage bonds and surging consumer-loan delinquencies stuck the bank with a year-long string of net losses totaling $20 billion. Last month, the bank got a $20 billion infusion from the U.S. Treasury, on top of $25 billion of economic-rescue funds received the previous month. In the meantime, Citi has no plans to scrap the $20-million-a-year naming-rights deal (story here) that it has inked with the New York Mets baseball team. Citibank also has no plans to rehire any of the 53,000 employees that are being let go as part of a wide-ranging cost-cutting program (story here). Citi will also be keeping the $45 billion in cash it has grabbed from taxpayers, too. Of course, the Fed did get some preferred stock for its trouble, so I guess my last comment isn’t fair. Wink, wink. And that nice interest-rate hike that Citibank gave many of us? It isn’t reversing that either.
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