Citigroup Inc. has sold off 20 percent of the assets in its structured investment vehicles in the last two months, the bank said Friday.

Assets in the SIVs declined to $66 billion as of Nov. 30 from $83 billion as of Sept. 30, Citigroup confirmed after a report from Moody's Investors Services detailed the falling asset values of several SIVs.

SIVs are complex funds selling short-term debt, like unsecured commercial paper, to investors such as hedge funds. The SIVs then use the proceeds to buy longer-term assets, like mortgage-backed securities, that yield higher returns.

The vehicles normally generate money through fees and the difference between short-term and long-term rates. But demand for short-term assets has dried up due to plummeting home prices, and that has led to liquidity problems for SIVs.

Citi manages seven SIVs, and the Moody's report said six of them -- Beta Finance Corp., Centauri Corp., Dorada Corp., Five Finance Corp., Zela Finance Corp. and Sedna Finance Corp. -- saw asset values decline since September.

Moody's said assets declined at SIVs managed by other financial institutions, too, including HSBC Holdings PLC, Bank of Montreal, Standard Chartered Bank, Societe Generale, Rabobank International and MBIA.

The ratings agency also put many of the SIVs' assets on review for a possible downgrade.

The declines reflect the efforts by Citi and other banks to sell off their SIV assets and lower the troubled funds' leverage. It's possible that eventually, the world's SIVs will liquidate completely; JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon said at a banking conference Nov. 13 that SIVs would go "the way of the dinosaur."

Citi's SIVs now hold about 35 percent less in assets than they did in July, before the credit markets froze up.

Some analysts have criticized Citi, the nation's largest bank by assets, for keeping the SIVs off its balance sheet -- which means the bank, essentially, does not consider the SIVs' losses as its own. So far, regulators have not said Citi has done anything wrong according to accounting rules, but after HSBC on Monday said it would bring its own SIVs on its books, there were many calls on Wall Street for Citi to do the same.

However, the bank has said it intends to continue to provide liquidity to the SIVs at an "arm's length."

"The funding strategy for Citi-advised SIV's remains unchanged from the disclosures in our third quarter 10Q filing. We continue to focus on liquidity and reducing leverage," Citi spokesman Michael Hanretta said in a statement.

Citi, along with JPMorgan and Bank of America Corp., have been planning a multibillion dollar fund to buy the distressed short-term assets that SIVs need to keep from going bankrupt.

Though Citi has been keeping SIVs off its books, other problematic fixed-income products have taken their toll on the bank. Citi took a hit of about $6.5 billion in the third quarter due to subprime mortgages and instruments called collateralized debt obligations that have mortgage exposure. In October, it estimated its portfolio may lose another $8 billion to $11 billion in value in the fourth quarter, and perhaps more if the credit markets worsen.

On Monday night, however, the bank announced that the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority bought a 4.9 percent stake for $7.5 billion, a move that lifts Citi's cash levels to offset some of the debt on its balance sheet.

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