Treasury to earn $2.25 billion on Citi securities

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Treasury said on Thursday it will earn a net profit of $2.246 billion on the sale of Citigroup trust preferred securities and has cut its ownership stake in the bailed-out banking giant to 12.4 percent.

In a statement, the Treasury said it sold all of the trust preferred securities that it received in exchange for guaranteeing a pool of about $301 billion in Citigroup assets. The Treasury never made any payouts on the guarantee, which has been canceled.

The Treasury said it had completed the sale of a third tranche of 1.5 billion Citigroup common shares, bringing its stake down to 12.4 percent -- around a third of the 36 percent that it held at the peak of its bailout efforts last year.

The Treasury said that since launching a regular stock trading program earlier this year, it has sold a total of 4.1 billion Citigroup shares for gross taxpayer proceeds of about $16.4 billion.

It still holds 3.4 billion shares, and expects to resume sales shortly after the end of a blackout period for Citi's third quarter earnings. The company is scheduled to report its results on October 18.

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Andrew Hay)