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Wow. In my years in this industry, I have never encountered another organization generating this volume and variety of controversy. Ouch. Reading a number of threads on this site has been jaw-dropping about Citi. The pattern is now too consistent to ignore.

The current COO presided over the Wealth business before the current Global Wealth Head was hired. So did the former Citi CFO. Neither produced results. Both were elevated regardless.

The COO then oversaw the compliance failures that resulted in a $135 million penalty under the OCC consent order. He remains on staff.

The bank paid Paul Weiss $30 million to conduct an independent investigation into the current Global Wealth Head. That man is now facing a lawsuit.

The CFO has been linked to personnel decisions involving risk exposure reporting that affected capital allocations.

The CHRO, whose tenure has generated significant commentary on this platform, bears equal scrutiny — particularly given the decisions made about who stays and who goes.

Jane Fraser paid herself $42 million in 2025. The Global Wealth Head’s compensation increased to $13 million.

The volume of internal leaks to the press — memos, assessments, complaints — is itself a signal. When employees have no functional internal recourse, they find other ways to be heard.

Citi’s situation is distinctive because it is sustained, layered, and self-reinforcing — regulatory failures, leadership conduct issues, and personnel controversies running simultaneously, year after year.

Let that sit alongside this: Citi continues to shed competent people at every level (many of whom are of a certain age and gender) while its consent orders remain unresolved, its data infrastructure remains fragmented by its own admission, and the strategic vision — the roles, the responsibilities, the career pathways — remains opaque to the people expected to execute it.

Now the bank wants to acquire a mid-size institution. Before it has transformed itself. Before it has demonstrated it can manage what it already has. That warrants a harder look. A leadership culture that makes the people who might expose its incompetence disappear is not transformation. It is self-preservation at institutional scale.

Regulators have every reason to look — carefully, and soon — at who is running this institution and how.