Just as I was beginning to wonder why Citi had gone quiet in the headlines, the Observer publishes a piece on Jane Fraser’s turnaround that calls for commentary, and Story 441 beat me to it.
As Story 441 says, earnings and cost cuts don’t tell you whether a transformation is actually working.
I’d push the point further.
Why does [REDACTED]’s name appear in a story about Wealth revenue? Does the press mean to suggest that her case is the biggest risk to that business delivering on its targets?
Has the press gone soft on Citi? Coverage of Citi in the mainstream press has been strikingly muted of late, especially on [REDACTED]’s recent legal procedural win against the bank. I find that hard to ignore. No news is not good news. It screams muzzle and cover-up.
Why not give some of that space to the growing number of accounts from former employees about how HR, Ethics and Legal handled their cases? That story would be more fitting, and more relevant to anyone judging how this bank is run.
Story 441 traces a run of senior women leaving and their responsibilities passing to men. One lawsuit won’t move a valuation. A pattern in how a bank investigates its own people tells you how it’s run.
By the way, is anyone noticing that Cards keeps lagging? Revenue was flat year on year and net income fell 8%, after years under the business head who is now CFO.
The claim that Citi has re-engineered around 100 processes with AI deserves skepticism, especially in Wealth and Cards, where the underlying data is weak. AI doesn’t fix bad data. It scales it.
Story 441 ends on unresolved rot. The Observer ends on sustained performance across the whole bank. They’re describing the same test: risk and compliance incidents, data errors like the Revlon payment blunder, and whether employees trust the systems meant to hold leaders accountable – they don’t.