I am currently unemployed, which means I have the misfortune of spending far too much time on LinkedIn.
One of my favorite recurring genres on that hellsite is the earnest proclamation that if only more women were in charge, the world would be a kinder, fairer, more humane place.
I have one question.
Have these people met Jane Fraser?
Because if female leadership is supposed to usher in a new age of enlightened capitalism, someone forgot to send Citi the memo.
A few highlights:
*Remember when Citi routinely had at least six women on the “Most Powerful Women in Banking” lists? All of them are gone except one. Funny how the first woman to run a major Wall Street bank somehow ended up presiding over a blood bath of talented women leaving her firm or being so diminished they fell off a cliff.
*Meanwhile, she hired two men known on Wall Street for their toxicity, yet she has repeatedly stood behind both. Nothing says “women lead differently” quite like perpetuating the Boys’ Club while enjoying the historical significance of your own promotion.
*Then came Trump. Fraser wasted no time making nice with an administration that might prove helpful in getting Citi out from under the consent orders that have followed her around like toilet paper stuck to a shoe. Principles are wonderful things, but apparently regulatory relief has its charms. And now that Trump is on the ropes in the U.S. Fraser “carefully” begins to distance from him i(see article below).
*DEI? That disappeared at approximately the speed of sound once the political winds changed. Which makes it especially rich to hear Fraser continue explaining that diversity is good for business. Give this woman an Academy Award for performative conviction. She can display it next to the abandoned representation goals.
*And then there are her self-proclaimed “cheeky pranks.” Fraser apparently loves playing them on her staff and enjoys telling people about it. Ah yes, the workplace prank: cruelty’s favorite little rebrand. Nothing puts the “human” in human capital quite like the CEO amusing herself at the expense of people who cannot tell her to f*ck off.
My personal favorite, however, is “collective accountability.” Citi’s shareholder letter invokes it while assuring investors that “we will not make excuses.” Then regulators fined Citi another $136 million in 2024 for failing to make sufficient progress on problems dating back to the 2020 consent orders. Citi acknowledged missed transformation deliverables.
Jane Fraser’s compensation for the year: $31.1 million.
At Citi, accountability is apparently collective. Compensation, somewhat less so.
And then there’s HR.
Citi has accumulated a lovely little trail of litigation containing allegations about HR and its security operation, CSIS, that make for some astonishing reading. [REDACTED], Citi’s head of HR, sits on Fraser’s executive management team and has been CHRO for Fraser’s entire tenure.
Five years in, you don’t get to point toward HR like it’s an unruly franchise you recently discovered operating in the basement. It’s yours.
Shareholders are happy, the stock has soared, and by that measure she’s been successful. It’s the hypocrisy that’s unbearable: there’s nothing wrong with being a ruthless capitalist, but wrapping it in a cashmere blanket of empathy and female empowerment is a level of hypocrisy that would make Machiavelli blush.
Citi chief’s cowed Trump comments reveal corporate America’s tightrope