Citibank

Insurance is one of those products you hope you never have to use. But if you do have to, you expect it to be there for you when you need it. At the very least, you don't want your insurer throwing curveballs at you with a lot of rigmarole about terms and conditions that you weren't even told about in the first place. That's the situation Dudley Johnson, 57, of Altadena found himself in after trying to get Citibank to make good on its Credit Protector Program, which promises to safeguard people who lose their jobs by "freezing payments to your Citi account for up to two years.

Frequent-flier miles clearly have value — why else would people want them? But do they also represent taxable income? Citibank seems to think so. It's sending tax forms to people who received thousands of miles as a reward for opening a checking or savings account. Those forms value each mile at about 2.5 cents and list the total dollar amount as miscellaneous income. This is news to tax pros. "I've been practicing for 25 years and I've never had an instance where miles have been treated as taxable," said Gregg Wind, a West Los Angeles certified public accountant.

Citigroup Inc.'s Citibank, the nation's largest credit card issuer, has agreed to pay $1.6 million as part of a settlement with 27 states over the way telemarketing firms sell products and services to the banking company's customers. The agreement announced Wednesday settles a two-year investigation led by attorneys general in California, Illinois, New York and Vermont. The states were looking into customer complaints about the marketing practices of telemarketing firms contracted by Citibank.

Bank of America was forced by public outrage to retreat from a plan to charge people $5 a month to use their debit card. But what if your bank told you that you'd have to pay it a fee to make a cash deposit? In other words, you'd have to give them money just to give them money. You'd be royally cheesed, right? Yet major banks routinely ding their business customers with cash-deposit fees. BofA, for example, says some of its business accounts levy a fee of 20 cents for every $100 in cash deposited after an initial $10,000.

Netscape Communications Corp. agreed to license its electronic-commerce software to Citibank, marking a victory for Netscape as it focuses on its corporate-software business. Netscape said Citibank, one of the largest consumer banks, has a permanent license to use its CommerceXpert line of software that lets the financial institution conduct business over the Internet. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Citibank restored service at its 2,000 automated teller machines after they were shut down intermittently for a second day by software problems. The company's online banking services remained out of commission and a spokesman said he was not sure when they would be restored. The bank, a unit of financial-services giant Citigroup, said it put 500 service representatives into its branches to deal with customers during the outage, which began about 5 p.m. Tuesday. About 2 million U.S.

A government agency that owns a stake in Aeromexico, one of Mexico's largest airlines, said Thursday that it had accepted a $249-million takeover offer for the carrier by an investment group led by Citibank Inc.'s Banamex unit. The announcement came after a bidding war heated up Wednesday between the Banamex group and a father-son team of businessmen: Moises Saba Masri and Alberto Saba Raffoul. Deposit insurance agency IPAB said it accepted the offer of 2.

When Citibank opened its 10th retail branch in Japan over the summer, it handed out flyers reading, "Best Bank Citibank," and offered crisp $10 bills to the first 1,000 customers opening certain foreign currency accounts. Such aggressive marketing is unheard of in this country, where banks usually agree among themselves what is permissible strategy.

Citibank said Wednesday it will install as many as 3,000 automated teller machines in Blockbuster Video stores across the U.S. starting this quarter, expanding its ATM network to 39 states. Citibank, the retail banking unit of Citicorp, doesn't plan to charge "access fees," or surcharges, at the ATMs, a spokesman said. The nation's 11th-largest bank, with $56 billion in assets, now has about 400 branches in nine states, including California, and the District of Columbia.

The Bank of New York has filed a lawsuit accusing Citibank and its parent company of a "massive scheme of deception" designed to hide the failing finances of former energy giant Enron Corp. while making billions of dollars for itself. The lawsuit, filed in New York state Supreme Court, does not specify how much the plaintiffs seek, but it states the investors want to at least recoup their investments, which would be as much as $2.4 billion.

Insurance is one of those products you hope you never have to use. But if you do have to, you expect it to be there for you when you need it. At the very least, you don't want your insurer throwing curveballs at you with a lot of rigmarole about terms and conditions that you weren't even told about in the first place. That's the situation Dudley Johnson, 57, of Altadena found himself in after trying to get Citibank to make good on its Credit Protector Program, which promises to safeguard people who lose their jobs by "freezing payments to your Citi account for up to two years.

Another day, another new bank fee. As the uproar swelled over Bank of America Corp.'s planned $5 monthly charge for debit card use, megabank rival Citigroup Inc. was notifying many Citibank customers that they soon would have to start paying for their checking accounts unless they maintained significantly higher balances. Letters are going out across the country alerting Citi customers of account changes, said the bank's retail banking chief, Stephen Troutner. In many cases, that means customers will have to maintain fatter balances to avoid fees, although Troutner said a basic account option makes dodging charges easier.

Bowing to complaints of fee gouging, Bank of America said Wednesday that, starting this summer, it would deny transactions for customers using debit cards if they didn't have funds in their accounts to cover the charges. The statement from the Charlotte, N.C., bank, the top U.S. issuer of cards, means BofA joins New York's giant Citibank in backing off overdraft fees on debit card purchases. With federal rules regarding the fees already set to tighten this summer, the decision could pressure other big card issuers into following suit.

The battles over bank fees may be shifting from credit cards to other types of accounts. Citigroup Inc.'s Citibank unit this month had planned to start charging a $9.50 monthly fee on checking accounts it had marketed as free. But in a settlement announced Monday with New York Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo, the banking giant agreed to keep the accounts free until at least 2011. After Congress passed a law last year making it harder for banks to raise interest rates and other fees on credit cards, some industry lobbyists said the law, which takes effect Feb. 22, would force financial institutions to find ways to make up for lost revenue.

Ed Myska works as executive vice president of El Segundo's Bank of Manhattan, so it's pretty fair to say that he knows a thing or two about keeping his financial house in order. Yet he was among numerous people who have been notified by Citibank in recent days that the interest rate on their credit cards is soaring to almost 30%. Letters being mailed out by Citi say only that the rate increase will allow the company "to continue to provide our customers with access to credit."

Citibank and Bank of the West agreed Friday to honor state officials' requests that they continue accepting California IOUs, as most other banks refused. With the state Legislature still embroiled in a fight over how to close a $26-billion budget deficit, the California government is expected to issue nearly $3 billion worth of interest-bearing IOUs this month. Starting today, major banks such as Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Citibank began a service Monday that allows Vietnamese-Americans in California to transfer money directly to relatives in Vietnam. The program, which restricts transfers to $300 for each family every three months, is the first such service provided by a major U.S. bank since the end of the Vietnam War.

MCI Communication Corp. said Citibank has awarded MCI an additional $30 million of its telecommunications business over the next three years. This expands on Citibank's previous $80-million contract with MCI, announced in November, bringing the total value to $110 million. MCI will provide voice and private data line service, directory assistance and MCI calling cards for Citibank's card products business, the nation's largest issuer of Visa and Master-Card credit card.

Citigroup Inc. said former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin would step down as chairman of the board's executive committee but remain senior counselor at the biggest U.S. bank. Rubin, who turns 70 this week, will remain a director, Citigroup said Monday on its website. The New York company eliminated the executive committee and shifted its responsibilities to the nominating and governance committee led by Richard Parsons, chairman of Time Warner Inc. Rubin was hired as chairman of the executive committee in 1999 after he left the Clinton administration.

Hackers broke into Citibank's network of automated teller machines inside 7-Eleven stores and stole customers' personal identification numbers, according to recent court filings that revealed a disturbing security hole in the most sensitive part of a banking record. The scheme netted the alleged identity thieves millions of dollars. But more important for consumers, it indicates criminals were able to access PINs -- the numeric passwords that theoretically are among the most closely guarded elements of banking transactions -- by attacking the back-end computers responsible for approving the cash withdrawals.