Citigroup says fourth-quarter profit dropped on legal costs

NEW YORK - Citigroup said Thursday that its fourth-quarter profit dropped 86 percent after incurring large legal and restructuring charges.

The bank earned $350 million, or 6 cents a share, for the three-month period ending in December, compared with a profit of $2.5 billion, or 0.77 cents a share, for the same period a year ago.

Revenue was flat at $17.78 billion.

The bank said in December that it would incur charges of $3.5 billion in the fourth quarter to cover the costs associated with investigations into currency trading, the manipulation of a key interest rate, as well as anti-money laundering and related probes. Money was also allocated for reducing the bank's head count and cutting its real estate holdings.

Like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, Citi also reported a drop in quarterly fixed-income trading revenue. Citi said that revenues in that part of its business fell to $2 billion in the period, a drop of 16 percent from a year earlier, due to a "challenging" economic environment.

The results fell short of analysts' estimate of 10 cents a share, according to the financial data provider FactSet.

For the full year, Citi earned $7.3 billion, a drop of 47 percent compared with earnings of $13.7 billion a year earlier.

Citi's stock was unchanged at $49.05 in premarket trading. The bank's stock is down 9.4 percent this year.