Who is running Citigroup?
We know this banking giant is too big to fail. But is it also too big to manage? (Fortune Magazine) — Let us now consider a famous business convulsion. A year ago the largest banking company in the world, Citigroup, was weeks into one of its best quarters in history. It was invincibly marching toward $6.2 billion in profits for the period, a matter so heartening for Citi’s oft-maligned CEO, Charles O. Prince III, that as early as May he was astonishingly inviting reporters (like this writer) to come around and chat. At the same time, Vikram Pandit was about to go to work for Citi. Once a Morgan Stanley standout who’d risen to head the institutional securities group, he was fired in 2005 by CEO Philip Purcell. He and other Morgan Stanley refugees started a hedge fund, Old Lane Partners – and now, in early 2007, Pandit was deep in discussions with Lewis Kaden, vice chairman of Citi. In July they closed a deal for Citi to buy Old Lane, which had $4 billion in assets, and to make Pandit he
