The Financial Times reports that Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann is said to have been approached about the possibility of taking the reins over at Citi, but confirmed that he was not available. The difficulty of filling the top job at Citi mirrors the problems the FA is having finding someone for the also vacant England football team manager position - a well paid job, working for a decent brand, which no-one wants because you're on a hiding-to-nothing (now Merrill CEO John Thain is also thought to have spurned Citi's advances, as is US Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman CEO) Hank Paulson).

In the meantime, Bloomberg reports that Bill Mills, who heads up Citi's corporate and markets unit for EMEA, told a UK Treasury Select Committee Tuesday that his firm had suffered 'reputational damage' from the fallout of the US subprime lending crisis, and said that 'our losses greatly exceeded the profits we made in this field over several years'.

Mills said that Citi will also need to keep funding 7 troubled structured investment vehicles (SIVs) it manages as to do otherwise would seriously affect its reputation in the market. The Wall Street Journal reports that the firm has already committed some $10bn to the vehicles, $7.6bn of which had been drawn down as at the 30th October.

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