arkay

Still No Vision at Citigroup

Felix,

You are back again with your negativity on citi. Currently the market sentiment is against financials. So any news is bad news for citi. Dont expect miracles? Citi has had prolonged periods of inefficiency during Sandy Weil and Chuck Prince. You can only make progress when the market sentiment and fundamentals support you.

Citi is one of the most recognized global franchise. It will recover well and is well positioned to take advantage of its global reach.

Citi's Pandit Spams His Customers

Felix,

Get a like. Will you. During difficult times, it is common for CEO to send communication about what is the direction of the company to the street, customers which is precisely what Pandit has done. The email is just a courtesy letter that provides commitment to the customer.

The outcome of this email is get a positve vibe from the customer, it is nice to get an email from CEO. No-one has anymore time to over-analyze anything beyond that.

Citi's Pandit Skewered

Felix,

I don't know what you have with this guy Pandit that makes you two consecutive articles about a non-trivial issue and that about an email.

While I dont give a rat-ass as about any email that I receive from customer service time-to-time, I would appreciate an email communication that comes from CEO of the company. Beyond that I dont over analyze anything else.

So instead of wasting your time and energy on stupid email analysis, why dont you contribute on something more tangible that could help us understand the market / make trades

Why Citi Can't Be a Global Universal Bank

Felix,

If Citi spins off the businesses now, citi would be selling the businesses for less. You cannot make hasty changes without looking at the whole picture.
The idea of offering universal banking is sound. Citi has a very good franchise globally compared to anyone in the world. Dont look at the world from the eye of what works / does nt work in US will not work elsewhere.

The reason why there is no universal bank in the US is by the design of US regulators early on - not to build a monopoly. That is the reason why you had regional banks which were quite huge. In the last 10 years, there has been deregulation and some of the banks are expanding their presence in the US (BAC, JPM) while others like (Citi) are expanding globally.

The reason why Citi failed is because of its inability to transform the vision into reality and another reason was there was no burning platform to necessitate change. Given the mortgage crisis, now there is a change in CEO and I hope there is a change in Board as well. Allow Vikram Pandit to evaluate the business concept as whole and fix the businesses, cut costs, increase the value of each operations and decide whether to spin off the business based on strategic value to the future of the business

Vikram Pandit, 'COO' of Citigroup

Precisely. What vision are you going to talk about if you cannot execute? In order to execute, you need to understand what is working and what needs to be fixed.

Articulating the vision without understanding the ground realities have brought citi to what it is today. What citi needs now is an engineer to execute rather a visionary.