Story 198

This week, Fortune published a favorable profile of Jane Fraser and Citi’s turnaround. It is worth reading — for what it chooses not to examine. For investors, Fortune provides the “What” — the plan, the metrics, the narrative arc. What it does not provide is the “How” — the friction, the trust deficit, the litigation…

An MD in the former USPB Risk group started quietly reassigning a Director’s workload onto one of his peers. No explanation was given — none is deemed required. By routing a Director’s responsibilities through another, she could create the appearance that he was supervising and elevating a peer. A paper trail for a promotion, built…

Story 365 – I worked briefly at JPM after it acquired First Republic. My experience is that [REDACTED] is a menace, but that’s not what I came here to say. What shocked me was the degree to which employees behaved as though they were part of the Cult of Dimon. No matter how basic or…

The Machiavellian Operator 1. The Shadow Structure: Empire-Building as Self-Promotion Within what was formerly US Personal Banking (USPB) at Citi, the Head of Enterprise Risk and Balance Sheet Management built an internal replica of the Second Line of Defense Enterprise Risk Management team. No other business unit at Citi operates this way. Having come from…

To Story 242, what you have written here is brave, and I want to honor that. But I also want to name what is living beneath the surface of this reflection, because you have already named it yourself, even if you pulled back from its full weight. Angela Davis said that “we have to talk…

As a senior executive in financial services (not Citibank), I’ve watched time and time again as high-performing, driven women have been pushed out of the organization. I fell for the company line about early retirements and decisions to pursue other interests, but now I know these women were targeted. My own story is this: decades…