What's in a Name? For Citi, Trouble

Vikram Pandit has a lot on his plate, but perhaps someone at Citigroup needs to think about how investments get named. Or at least make an effort to strip out any unintended irony.

In August, as fears over the collapse of subprime mortgages paralyzed the credit markets, Citigroup created a $2.5 billion mortgage-backed security called Bonifacius, reports Mark Pittman of Bloomberg News.

Bonifacius, means "good fate" in Latin. Alas, the fate of the Bonifacius security was a quick collapse.

Pittman says the security was named after the 5th century Roman general who was among "the last of the Romans," as depicted by Edward Gibbon in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Determined to undermine a rival general, Bonifacius made the mistake of inviting barbarians, the Vandals, to invade the North African possessions of the Roman Empire.

"The generous mind of Count Boniface was tortured by the exquisite distress of beholding the ruin which he had occasioned, and whose rapid progress he was unable to check," Gibbon writes.

Much like the credit crisis, no?

Citi, as you may recall, has had troubles with names in the past. In 1999, the bank set up a complex financial vehicle for the Italian dairy giant Parmalat that was called Buconero, Italian for "black hole." Parmalat itself became a black hole when in collapsed in January 2004 in a huge accounting scandal.

Then there was the "Dr Evil" trading strategy involving European bonds in the summer of 2004. European regulators were not amused and fined the bank millions of dollars.

But perhaps Bonifacius was not named after a Roman general, but a pope: Pope Bonifacius VI, who was pontiff for just 16 days in 896.