Story 336
Dear Story 335,
I, too, am a regular reader. It seems likely, from the breadth of stories, that Citi’s independent risk functions may be compromised. Similar concerns have been raised in the past about other institutions. For example, regulators found that a lack of independence of control functions contributed to the issues at Wells Fargo during its “sales scandal.” Specifically, Audit and Risk Management were sharing confidential information with the business leader they were supposed to oversee, who was then using that information to retaliate against employees.
The same thing has been described on this Web site over and over.
It’s worth reminding the executives at Citi that the fines and penalties paid by Wells’ executives was no joke, nevermind the personal humiliation of being banned from the industry had to hurt:
*John Stumpf, CEO, $17.5M fine
*Carrie Tolstedt, Head of Community Bank, $25M fine.
*Claudia Russ Anderson, Community Bank Group Risk Officer, $10M fine.
*Hope Hardison, Head of HR, $2.5M fine.
*David Julian, Chief Auditor, $7M fine.
*Paul McLinko, Executive Audit Director, $1.5M fine.
Back to Citi, the company is clearly counting on its relationship with the Trump administration to give them a hall pass for whatever crazy nonsense is going on. And, while, yes, they are able to get away with m*rder now given the degree to which their buddy in the White House is allergic to governance but public confidence, employee trust, and credibility with investors are not things a company can count on indefinitely if these concerns continue to surface.
We should start a polymarket bet on which $C executive gets fined and barred first!