Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Does Pandit's departure signify that Citigroup has cleaned up the 'casino' portion of the bank?

With the abrupt resignation of Vikram Pandit and John Havens, the top two officials at Citigroup, everyone is asking what this means.

My question is does this signify that Citigroup has cleaned up the 'casino' portion of the bank or is the Board of Directors so fed up with the lack of progress that it dumped these officials?

Unlike Sheila Bair who had concerns over Pandit's lack of commercial banking experience, I thought that someone with Pandit's experience in 'casino banking' was appropriate if he was serious about cleaning up the casino portion of the bank.

We will never know if he cleaned up the casino because Citigroup never embraced ultra transparency and the disclosure on an ongoing basis of its current global asset, liability and off-balance sheet exposure details to show that he did.

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