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Banking giant books its fourth straight quarterly loss but the loss was smaller than expected.

Last Updated: October 16, 2008: 9:11 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Citigroup's losing streak continued after reporting a $2.8 billion loss Thursday, as the bank found itself stung yet again by credit and mortgage-related writedowns.

During the third quarter, the company said it lost $2.8 billion, or 60 cents a share. A year ago, the company reported a profit of $2.21 billion, or 44 cents a share.

This was the fourth-consecutive loss for Citigroup, the nation's largest bank by assets. The company has lost more than $20 billion in the past four quarters.

Still, the latest results were somewhat encouraging as the loss was smaller-than-expected. Analysts were expecting a loss of 70 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters.

Investors did not appear to be too heartened by the results as Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) shares were flat in pre-market trading following Wednesday's 13% decline.

"[The numbers] still show that the company is mismanaged," said William Smith, president of SAM Advisors LLC, whose firm owns shares of Citigroup. "Part of this is the macro-environment as all the banks are having writeoffs. But Citi is above and beyond."

Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit attributed the company's latest performance to the writeowns, which included a $4.4 billion charge in its securities and banking division, as well as the worsening economic climate.

But Pandit also gave an optimistic assessment of the company's ongoing restructuring plan. The firm cut expenses and trimmed its payroll by 11,000 people from the previous quarter as part of previously announced layoffs.

"We expect these improvements will enable us to realize the full earnings power of our franchise as the economy stabilizes," Vikram Pandit, Citigroup CEO said in a statement.

While writedowns continued to eat away at the company's latest results, Citigroup also found itself hit hard by credit costs during the quarter.

Both its consumer banking and massive credit card business swung to a loss during the quarter, as increasing signs of trouble in the U.S. economy forced Citi to bulk up its credit loss reserves.

Citigroup's report is yet another dose of bad news for both the New York City-based bank and the overall financial sector. Merrill Lynch (MER, Fortune 500), the investment bank that agreed last month to sell itself to Bank of America, announced a bigger-than-expected loss Thursday morning.

Fearing further fallout in the banking sector both domestically and abroad, government officials around the world enacted measures in recent days to help prop up the industry.

As part of that plan, top U.S. regulators unveiled plans to inject $250 billion into the nation's banking system, with half of that amount going to nine major financial institutions including Citigroup, as well as rivals JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500).

And last week, Citigroup pulled out of its plans to buy Wachovia's (WB, Fortune 500) banking assets after it could not reach an agreement with Wells Fargo on how to split Wachovia's assets.

Although Cit's proposed deal was brokered by the FDIC and prevented Wachovia from failing, Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) subsequently made an offer to buy all of Wachovia. That deal was approved by the Federal Reserve over the weekend.