Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser will have to pull off the restructuring of the century to bring banking empire back to its former glory
NY Post
It seems almost unfathomable that there was time — and not that long ago — that Citigroup was the model financial services firm.
It might be yet again — but only if its CEO Jane Fraser can pull off the restructuring of the century.
Full disclosure: I’m not a believer in the Citi comeback story, though there are people I respect on Wall Street (Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo among them) who give it a decent shot.
My skepticism is grounded in the fact that I have covered the place for decades and — like the bank’s long-suffering investors — have seen its institutional rot firsthand.
Citigroup’s current sad state of affairs — a lagging stock price, layers of (mis)management, endless failed restructurings and inability to crack the top tier of major business categories — didn’t occur overnight and will take some doing to fix.
The so-called financial supermarket was created back in 1998 by merger impresario Sandy Weill and his sidekick, a brilliant and then-youngish executive named Jamie Dimon, when they joined their Travelers Group brokerage and insurance business with John Reed’s Citicorp commercial-banking empire.
