Citi grounded

After US politicians raised a stink over Citigroup’s plans to spend $50 million to buy an executive jet, the bank has cancelled its plans. Reuters quotes a person familiar with the deal to say the jet in question was a Dassault Falcon 7X. The bank has been quoted as saying that it will have to pay millions in terms of penalties for cancelling a deal it had entered into way back in 2005 — presumably this is less costly than the possibility of turning Congress against it, especially since the bank could just need to go there again for another bailout. Corporate jets are a big thing with Congress — when the chiefs of Big Auto firms came to Washington to plead for a bailout, the fact that they flew in on separate corporate jets had become a big issue as well.