• Citigroup announced yesterday that it would sell a majority stake in Smith Barney to Morgan Stanley, but more change is on the way: The bank is expected to dump two consumer finance units as well as its "private-label" credit card business, which means now your Save the Whales Mastercard is in jeopardy, too. [WSJ, NYT]
• Deutsche Bank reported a loss of $6.3 billion in the fourth quarter. [BN]
• HSBC may need $30 billion to stay afloat. [DB]
• Nortel Networks has filed for bankruptcy protection. [BN]
• Just in case it wasn't eminently clear by all the bad news above, today is expected to be a pretty bad day in the markets. [WSJ]
• Marcus Schrenker was caught last night, but there's a new financial exec to add to the fugitive list: Ex-UBS exec Raoul Weil is now a wanted man. [NYT]
• Bernie Madoff will be in court in person later today when a judge considers an appear from prosecutors who want to imprison Madoff pending trial. [BN]
• Robert Jaffe, the Madoff middleman who failed to show up to meet with regulators yesterday, says he missed the meeting because he's sick. [WSJ]
• More on Tim Geithner's little tax problem. [NYT]

Marcus Schrenker, the accused Indiana insurance swindler who staged a plane crash, nearly ended his life as dramatically as he fake-ended it this past weekend.

At least Schrenker has shown some spunk and swagger in trying to escape financial fraud — unlike, say, Bernie Madoff, the $50 billion Ponzi schemer whose idea of flirting with danger seems to be mailing $200 mittens.

How many financial fraudsters are on the run, or at least appear to be? At least two as of this afternoon! There's Marcus Schrenker, the financial adviser accused of defrauding investors through three of his companies, who tried to fake his death over the weekend by bailing out of his plane (which crashed in a Florida swamp) before taking off on a red motorcycle. Schrenker remains missing—some suspect he may have fled the country—but if he gets caught, he'll have quite a movie to sell to Hollywood, won't he? Schrenker isn't the only crook to have mysteriously disappeared. Robert Jaffe, the Bernie Madoff middleman from Palm Beach, who, last we heard, was selling off his wardrobe to a consignment store, failed to show up at a meeting with Massachusetts regulators today. There isn't an arrest warrant for Jaffe yet. ("What happens now is yet to be determined," says an official.) Let's hope that changes. It isn't every day that you get to see a police car chase a vintage green MG through the streets of Palm Beach.

Marcus Schrenker is surely one of the most memorable villains to emerge in the financial crisis: The "wealth management" advisor is believed to have crashed an airplane to fake his own death.