Story 213

As a longtime Citi private bank employee, who cannot believe what I’ve witnessed over the past five+ years, I’d like to share a little story: In 2020, as Jane Fraser was being named CEO, she moved quickly to reshape the firm. One of her earliest calls was to merge two internal wealth businesses into a single unit. It wasn’t the result of a long, carefully built plan. It was rushed—the typical McKinsey-esque strategy that looks good only on paper.

She picked two insiders with no industry experience to run it. She chose loyalty over execution risk.

They struggled almost immediately. By late 2022, the problems were too visible to ignore. As Barron’s later wrote: Citigroup wealth management business is struggling to deliver even its most fundamental services efficiently, prompting a “deterioration” in client trust.

The two leaders who had been put in charge were forced out of their roles—but not out of the firm. Instead, they were reassigned into senior positions with titles like Vice Chairman and COO, keeping their status, compensation, and proximity to power largely intact despite their disastrous tenure and significant damage done.

A high profile replacement was named in 2023 to much fanfare.

But there was little evidence of deep vetting. He was installed as the “solution,’ but new problems surfaced almost immediately—complaints of bullying and a hostile work environment, multiple cases that created more havoc inside an already struggling business.

A “kitchen sink” write-off cleared losses and reset expectations. Publicly, it was framed as cleaning things up. Internally, it avoided a more direct admission: the strategy, the leadership picks, and the execution had all failed.

Throughout it, Fraser does one thing consistently, out of a certain U.S. President’s playbook: double down on her choices.

Because unwinding them fully—removing the people, admitting the missteps—would make it clear where the problems started. But for sure accountability isn’t on the table for the first female CEO in banking, never mind that Queen Bee is also responsible for gutting the firm of high-profile women.