Lets say someone from the Vatican and Citigroup showed up to an auction and started bidding against each other on the same item. Who would win the bidding war in each of these two scenarios?
Both institutions could spend as much cash as they currently had in the bank
Both institutions could spend as much cash much cash as they had in the bank and liquidate all assets to raise more cash to put towards winning the bid.
Were going to assume that the shareholders/church members are willing to let each of their reps spend every last penny to win the auction.
Citigroups numbers for 2007 according to Forbes
Profits:21.54 ($bil)
Assets:1884.32 ($bil)
Market Value:247.42 ($bil)
I’m not a financial expert, but I fail to see how the Vatican, with an operating surplus of $7 million (cite) could even hope to compete with a corporation with nearly $22 billion in profits. I can also only imagine that it would be a lot easier for Citibank to raise cash. It’d be a lot easier to sell off mortgages and investments than a historic church – how many people are in the market for cathedrals and historic paintings versus actual financial instruments?
This is pretty topical. In San Diego right now the Church is going through court cases intended to assign monetary judgments in a bunch of priest abuse cases. There is a lot of wrangling over Church vs individual dioceses and who owns what. People have accused the Church of moving assets to various dioceses in an effort to appear that the Church does not have a lot of money.
Captain Amazing’s cite appears to me to just cover Vatican City and not the world wide church. I think the OP wanted to compare the financial might of the whole church not just the place where the Pope sleeps to citi corp.
If we included assets, what about all of the art and artifacts that they own? Certainly some of those items must be “priceless”, as it were. We are also forgetting that the vatican has a church full of members who (theoretically) could be counted upon for money as well.
Bwahahaha! There is no power in all creation that can mess with Citigroup! Reaper and ruler both, it trods the jeweled thrones of the world beneath its booted feet! Pardon me while I go count and recount my stock certificates . . .
To be frank, not that I’m an expert on this sort of thing, but it depends on the level of dedication. On the surface level, then Citigroup - with its tremendous assets as well as the fact that it’s, well, a goddamn bank - owns the contest and can’t lose to the Holy See. This is what would potentially happen in the real world.
But if we consider ‘stockholders’ in the more ontological sense and say that the RCC can tap a greater well of its believers’ funds, then it is the Vatican which is victorious. After all, it does have about a billion members, and if - as the OP posits - all of those members are hell-bent on making sure the Vatican gets this trinket, then we could well be talking about what scientists sometimes like to call ‘boocoo bucks.’ Remember, there are over 75 million of them just in the United States, and assuming they control just 10% of the country’s GNP, then that’s still 1.2 trillion dollars. The entirety of Latin America - which is already pretty much the Pope’s personal fief in real life - probably amounts to a trillion more; that’s just a guestimate as the Communist Party of China is currently blocking my search-fu. France’s GDP is around a trillion, Spain and Italy are probably in the realm of 500-700 billion.
Eugh . . . all told, I think I need to call my stockbroker.
Right, but those are the kinds of assets that aren’t easy to liquidate. There’s not exactly a huge market for priceless art, so it isn’t like you can dump it all on ebay and expect a good return.
Further, if every one of the 569 Catholic archdioceses had an operating surplus the same size as the Vatican’s, that would still only add up to about $1.7 billion… and that’s a HUGE “if.” Citibank would still dominate.
One thing to consider is that Citibank is not going to buy something merely for ownership, there has to be an exepectation of return that would be acceptable to the major investors and shareholders.
The buying price is not the issue, its the investment potential.
The two may coincide, but may also not.
Imagine that someone discovers the ‘object of ultimate religious significance’ and puts it up for sale.
Citibank interest is only going ot be wether this object can be sold for more, or that it has some other marketable value.
The Catholic Church however has completely differant criteria, and on that basis would probably run some sort of worldwide fundraising campaign, I can almost imagine it now.
The chances that the two organisations would have similar strengths of motivation to purchase the same object are unlikely to be similar, but if there were some such item, the Catholic Church would probably win out over time, even if it meant purchase of the item from Citibank.
The moral purchase that the Catholic Church can call upon would probably not make a great business opportunity for Citibank, it would likely find itself losing market share in some significant markets.
The return on the object for Citbank would have to be pretty huge for it to risk such a large capital outlay that might be large enough to divert funds for other investment opportunities, and share markets would not like a portfolio that might be narrowed down as a result of this purchase.
Catholic Church on the other hand can make a virtue out of poverty.
You’re assuming in this, that every Catholic will be willing to give all of his or her money to the RCC for the purchase of the item. I don’t think this is supportable by reality.
Besides, the OP stipulated that each organization could only spend their own funds, not the funds of their members.
Dudes, the RCChurch owns a country–those numbers you are looking at are income statement numbers, not balance sheet numbers. I’d take the hard assets of the RCChurch over mere upstart money any day.
I don’t know, Citi has a market cap of about 260 Billion. I bet the Vatican could raise that much by selling off the treasury and real estate. (I’m talking about everyhting in the Vatican, not churches worldwide) Maybe not, I guess I’m assuming they have a big ole vault filled with paintings, rare books, and gold trinkets, but I guess I don’t know that.
It would be interesting to see which countries could not raise 260 Billion by having a big fire sale. This would assume the populstion isn’t involved, no installed tax base, but no obligations either. The pacific island nations without much in the way of natural resources would have trouble. I bet the Carribean nations could raise that much, the value being in tourism potential. I’m not sure about the European micro states. I guess another big if is how private real estate is included in the sale.
I don’t think that the Vatican could raise $250 billion quickly by selling art.
The above says the 2005 fine art market was 4.15 billion. I don’t think there is $250 billion chasing art. I think it would take about 50 to 60 years to raise 250 billion by selling art.
That’s a good point. The art market is not competitive. A massive release of a product would depress the market. Real estate would be a problem too. Very few private individuals would have the cash to move into St. Peter’s, even if we broke it down into quite a few surprisingly affordable units.
Their best bet might be to try and trade some of those one-of-a-kind pieces directly to the seller.
Church: “Would you rather have 200 billion dollars or the Shroud of Turin plus the whole of St. Peter’s Basillica (including our porn collection)?”
Seller: “Make me a Cardinal and we’ve got a deal.”
Church: “But you’re not even Catholic.”
Seller: “Hello, Citigroup?”
A lot of those who have responded here must have never have been to the Vatican Museum. While in liquid assets, Citigroup may win; in real world worth, the treasury of the Vatican is worth much more.
If all you’re interested in is cold hard cash, ok, fine, Citigroup wins. But if you include historical and cultural worth, Vatican wins and then proceeds to beat down the rest of the world. Furthermore, Citigroup only wins in the cold hard cash category because there isn’t a large enough market to properly bid on the Vatican’s inventory of “holy shit” treasures.
