Citi has never sought 'crisis advice' from HP

Don Callahan, Citigroup's chief administrative officer, has taken strong exception to a news item in the Financial Times which reported that the universal bank had sought advice from Hewlett-Packard about how to revive its business without splitting up the company.

"For the record, Citigroup has long been a client of Hewlett-Packard for various information technology-related projects," he writes in a letter in today's edition. "However, Citigroup has never engaged HP for 'crisis advice' or to discuss 'general strategy'."

The offending FT report cited anonymous sources "close to the situation", which is usually reliable newspaper code for 'top people at the company who would like to see this story leaked'.

The FT, however, didn't specify where these 'sources originated, although conspiracy theorists might like to note that article was bylined to Francesco Guerrero and Keving Allinson in San Francisco. They might also note that this story appeared just days after Citi's CEO Vikram Pandit had told the FT that he planned to slash billions of dollars from the bank's bloated technology budget. Although that's probably just a coincidence.