We would not be surprised to see $4-5 billion in proceeds from this transaction, which may be used for buybacks or, more likely, to support acquisitions of better growth/higher margin businesses.

Most of the company's revenue streams appear to have incrementally weakened each month in the quarter.

They will probably get rid of low-level jobs in high-cost cities, such as London, New York and Hong Kong.

This is very consistent with Citigroup's strategy to build and internationalize its key businesses and also to focus on businesses it thinks it can grow at a very rapid pace. Over the past 10 years, [Associates First] has had 23 percent compound growth in pre-tax earnings and a high growth operation ... which is consistent with Citibank's focus on acquiring high-growth targets.

Multinational/trust banks will probably broadly deliver on Wall Street estimates. However, we expect the quality of earnings to be poor as securities gains and other unusual items will commonly be used to offset weak trading results.

Assuming Lehman can successfully stage a profit rebound in early 2002, we believe the shares will prove to be an excellent value at this point, and we continue to see strong franchise value given the scarcity value of solid investment banking franchises.