Citigroup, the world's biggest financial services firm, has said its second-quarter profit more than quadrupled from a year ago to $5 billion.
This amounted to 97 cents a share, but was well short of the $1.02 per share expected by Wall Street.
The comparison with 2004 results was skewed because of a $4.95 billion provision last year to cover litigation related to the collapse of WorldCom that was offset partly by a $756m gain linked to the sale of its stake in Samba Financial Group.
Excluding these once-off items, the company's profit was down 7% with revenues off 3% from a year ago to $20.2 billion. Excluding the Samba sale, revenues would be up 2%.
'Our businesses faced challenging conditions during the quarter,' said CEO Charles Prince. 'The capital markets environment was one of the worst we have seen in years,' he added.
