According to DealJournal, the only major U.S. deal Citigroup isn’t tackling right now is NRG Energy’s pending unsolicited takeover offer for Calpine. A peek at how even an ailing bank can keep many rods in the fire, if it’s clever.

Deal Journal’s “Making Lemonade Out of Lemons” award this week goes to Citigroup’s investment bankers.

In the past two weeks, Citigroup’s bankers advised Harry Macklowe on his $3.95 billion sale of the GM Building to a group led by Mort Zuckerman; Electronic Data Systems on its $13.25 billion sale to Hewlett-Packard; Time Warner on the $40.3 billion splitoff of Time Warner Cable; Tribune Corp. on the sale of Newsday; and AIG on its $18 billion financing, which Citigroup also co-led.

While the deals cross all sectors, three of them–EDS, Time Warner, Tribune–come from the technology, media and telecommunications group, which lost co-head Chris Varelas a few months ago. Ben Druskin recently took over Varelas’s vacated spot.

The only major U.S. deal Citigroup isn’t working on right now is NRG Energy’s pending unsolicited takeover offer for Calpine. As of Friday, Citigroup ranked No. 3 in this year’s mergers and acquisitions rankings, with $271.1 billion of deals to its credit, behind No. 2 J.P. Morgan Chase and No. 1 Goldman Sachs Group. Goldman has racked up $357 billion in advisory credit this year, according to Dealogic.

Citigroup’s bankers have signed up the mandates despite–or perhaps because of–persistent talk about a breakup of Citigroup. New Chief Executive Vikram Pandit has publicly announced plans to overhaul all of Citigroup–although he has said he doesn’t plan to split it up–and he recently moved co-head of investment banking Alberto Verme to Dubai.

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