SEC Urges Approval of Citigroup Subprime Settlement

On an Oct. 15, 2007, conference call with analysts and investors, Crittenden said the company’s “subprime exposure” was $13 billion at the end of second quarter and had declined during the third quarter.

The figure he cited omitted “super-senior” tranches of collateralized debt obligations and financial guarantees known as liquidity puts that allowed customers to sell debt securities back to Citigroup if credit markets froze, the SEC said. Those products added more than $40 billion of subprime risk that the bank didn’t disclose to investors