Monday, April 06, 2009

Difference in Bank CEO's

I know that working at a bank that already received way too much money, you may question my comments here, but I did want to explain one difference between the CEO of GM and the CEO of Citibank - BofA - Smith Barney, etc.
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Citibank already fired our CEO (Chuck Prince) after our business model went in the toilet and we went, hat in hand, to the Saudi's.  Vikram is a new CEO since this all happened.  GM's CEO was fired by the government because the company wouldn't can him.
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Now if you want to replace our new CEO, that's fine.  But it is NOT true that we have kept our CEO during all of this.  We have changed CEO, CFO and Technology Team heads since this began.  
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In fact we dumped Chuckles out right away and replaced him with an interim CEO (with the unfortunate name of Sir Winfred Bischoff).  Other banks,  Bank Of America, AIG and other recipients of TARP money, have repalced their management teams too.  Most of the new CEOs were in finance but either retired or not with the bank when they were brought on.
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Vikram Pandit, now CEO Citi, was a Investment Manager of a group Citi purchased and he had essentially retired.  When they eased out Charles Prince as President and most of his defenders and advisors, they brought in new blood.
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I am not saying that this is right or okay to continue to give Citi funds - but most banks had already dumped their bad CEO's without government prodding.