Sunday, November 9, 2008

THE CITI NEVER. . .

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He was President of Morgan Stanley’s Investment Banking Group, when, in 2005, he quit with a few friends to start his own hedge fund. On December 11, 2007, he became Citigroup’s CEO! Today, Citigroup is facing a bloodbath, with a sickeningly shocking $138 billion dollars unsecured exposure to the Lehman collapse! Should Vikram Pandit, CEO & benefactor, close down Citigroup?


Adversity is a great teacher, and is an opportune time for some leadership lessons. US Gen. George S. Patton, who won many accolades during World War 2, was famous for his handling of adversities in warfare. During one operation in Sicily, he is said to have told one of his lieutenants that he had complete faith in him. To prove it, Patton went home and, you guessed it, slept! He used to famously quote, “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they’ll surprise you with their ingenuity.”

Not letting down his board’s belief, it seems Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit’s classy ingenuity – and that of his valued predecessors – has not only surprised, but even shocked the damned pants of Citi’s investor groups. Look at their performance on the ingenuity scale – for an organisation that had enviable smashing profits of $24.5 billion in 2005, the six months ending June 2008 have been pure genius – a killing loss of $7.6 billion! With one top US institution filing for bankruptcy (Lehman Brothers), the other (Merrill Lynch) being taken over by another (Bank of America), and the IMF estimate of gross losses suffered by the industry because of the sub-prime crisis crossing a gut wrenching $1 trillion, is Citigroup – one of the worst hit institutions in the US – going to be the next disaster on the West Coast? Boasting an asset size close to $2.1 trillion as on 2008 [double that of, say, India’s GDP], if Citi falls, Patton or no Patton, nobody’s going to sleep again for many months!

Not the least Victor J. Menezes, retd. Senior Vice Chairman of Citigroup, who reverted to us commenting, “I do not wish to get involved in any such media interactions concerning Citibank.” Truly speaking, the problems that Citigroup had piled up for itself were there for everybody to see; and as surprising as the analysis might be, the fact is nobody was ready to bell the billion-dollar pig and send it to the butcher’s. That Citi’s future is in grave danger can be easily viewed from the way share prices have plummeted. It’s a massacre on the bourses, with Citi’s share price falling from $55 in January 2007 to a pathetic $14 on September 17, 2008!


For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.
Source :
IIPM Editorial, 2008
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and
Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).


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