There’s almost too much awk to handle in today‘s New York magazine story on Vikram Pandit but we’re going to attempt to get through it, for you. Each moment of second hand embarrassment for Tickle a Vickle and the franchise at large makes us feel torn between a) standing up and declaring that we believe in Pandito and his diversified whorehouse and b) trampling old ladies as we make a disorderly line for the exits, setting fire to nearby buildings as we GTFO.
Like when VP tells writer Joe Hagan he’s been keeping up with the jokes at his expense, particularly those which regard job security. On the one hand, he’s able to laugh about this stuff, which is good, and perhaps indicates a thicker skin than we thought? On the other, it kind of sounds like nervous laughter that’s about to segue to tears preceding a meltdown on the floor of the C-suite.
Like when VP tells writer Joe Hagan he’s been keeping up with the jokes at his expense, particularly those which regard job security. On the one hand, he’s able to laugh about this stuff, which is good, and perhaps indicates a thicker skin than we thought? On the other, it kind of sounds like nervous laughter that’s about to segue to tears preceding a meltdown on the floor of the C-suite.
Pandit is trying to keep his chin up. “Look, I don’t want to leave until the job is done,” he tells me late last week. “I don’t want to lose the opportunity to put this company in the right place, because I believe I can do it.” Not everyone agrees, of course, and the consensus is that he might already have been replaced at Citi if the government could find anyone willing to take the thankless job. (“The funniest blog was e-mailed to me by a friend,” he jokes wanly. “ ’Pandit Gets to Keep His Crappy Job.’ ”)
And then there’s the uncharacteristic but increasingly frequent screaming and cursing. This is a side of Count Vikula we’ve never seen and kind of like. Maybe he should be getting angry! Maybe calmness no longer works. Maybe some well-placed outbursts and threats to “fucking kill you” are the spark the Big C needs, and being on HR’s shit list is never a bad thing. On the other: Nobody make any sudden movements. We’re all going to get out of here alive.
Pandit and Citi had relied on what amounted to the legal version of a handshake to secure the deal with Wachovia. And they dragged out the process while trying to separate Wachovia’s wealth-management division from the rest of the company, feeling it had too much overlap with Smith Barney. (Lew Kaden told a private group, “We’ve got 15,000 complainers, we don’t need 15,000 more.”) Pandit left just enough room for Wells Fargo to swoop in with a bid for $7 a share and snatch the bank out from under Citi.
Pandit was beyond infuriated. After learning of the coup during a middle-of-the night phone call, he angrily demanded to senior executives at Citi that they pull Wells Fargo’s credit lines. “Pull their fucking lines!” he screamed. “Pull their fucking lines!” A senior executive in the room calmly explained that Citigroup had no business with Wells Fargo. There was nothing they could do. Ultimately, Citi filed a lawsuit against Wells Fargo for breaching what Citi considered an exclusive deal.
Increasingly, Pandit was acting out of character, barking profanities in the hallways. One former Citi executive says that the head of human resources expressed concern about Pandit’s expletive-laced outbursts he’d had in the C-suite. (Pandit denies any such outbursts.) The Wachovia incident, says one longtime friend, “was the first time I have ever seen him go nuts.”
“Engineer”? Or plumber, up to his elbows in shit?
Pandit has very little time to use whatever power he has left to try to turn things around at Citi–news of the Treasury deal sent the stock plunging to a historic low. A friend jokes that the CEO is the “MacGyver of the private sector banking system,” out to “save Citi before the timing device runs to zero.” But Pandit has never seen himself as the hero type. He looks at the problem with the eyes of an engineer: “My job is to figure out which pipes go where and which pipes have to be cut off, which pipes have to be unclogged,” he told a close associate. “It’s going to take me a year and a half to two years and then the water will flow, and when the water will flow, the stock price goes up. The stock price goes up, everybody will come around.”
And then there’s this. Maybe it’s what Citi needs: an adorable ball of dork, lacking your typical CEO sheen. Or maybe we should just turn the whole thing over to this guy, one of five people in the world that can rescue the dump:
While this article seems to suggest that Vikram Pandit was meek, was not quite there when he was needed etc, a very interesting video of his at wharton- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98oR4iYYAsM
suggests he is extremely articulate and was very analytical in terms of what was the problem with the banking sector and simplified it to the extent that laymen can understand. I wish these newspapers instead of publishing such articles about Indians- Rajat gupta at all, would give credit where it is due. Vikram has cleaned up the bank and has done immense service to the company. Appreciate this and also appreciate the fact that the mess was created by Sandy Weill etc who incidentally have become very rich in the process
suggests he is extremely articulate and was very analytical in terms of what was the problem with the banking sector and simplified it to the extent that laymen can understand. I wish these newspapers instead of publishing such articles about Indians- Rajat gupta at all, would give credit where it is due. Vikram has cleaned up the bank and has done immense service to the company. Appreciate this and also appreciate the fact that the mess was created by Sandy Weill etc who incidentally have become very rich in the process
Since this article was published, Vikram Pandit has turned the tides to make the CitiGroup profitable once again. Impressed with his skilled leadership, After posting five consecutive quarterly profit Citigroup announced $23.2m retention award to Pandit making him one of the highest paid CEOs. Its worth noting that he had voluntarily accepted a $1 compensation until he made CitiGroup Profitable.
Now here's my question: Why is it that when I google Vikram Pandit I still see only the 2009 articles criticizing him? Why was there such a negative bias while reporting his so-called shortcomings? Why hasn't most of the media reported his stellar achievments afterwards? What about balanced reporting? It was essentially the skin color and ethnic origin of Mr. Pandit that was causing people to write horribly ill-researched articles as this one. And now that he has succeded, the same reporters have gone silent. Shame on such reporting.
Now here's my question: Why is it that when I google Vikram Pandit I still see only the 2009 articles criticizing him? Why was there such a negative bias while reporting his so-called shortcomings? Why hasn't most of the media reported his stellar achievments afterwards? What about balanced reporting? It was essentially the skin color and ethnic origin of Mr. Pandit that was causing people to write horribly ill-researched articles as this one. And now that he has succeded, the same reporters have gone silent. Shame on such reporting.
Pandit made gestures toward the trappings of Wall Street success, buying a house in Greenwich, Connecticut, next to former Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld and sending his children, Maya and Rahul, to Trinity School on West 91st Street (Pandit eventually joined its board of trustees). In most ways, however, Pandit remained a cultural outsider: While he paid dues to the exclusive Country Club of Purchase, part of Morgan Stanley’s unofficial social agenda for managing directors, a friend says Pandit never actually saw the inside of the club. His parents lived with him for part of the year in his Manhattan apartment, and Pandit drove the extended family around in a minivan. A fellow executive who once saw him at a movie theater was shocked to see Pandit out of his usual C-suite suit and tie, wearing an oversize anorak, stonewashed jeans, and white sneakers. He looked like “a nerd in the computer faculty,” says the onlooker.
Pandit was of two worlds, and the subtle cultural bias at Morgan Stanley didn’t make it easy to fit in. His wife, Swati, was frequently invited to Morgan Stanley events in which wives were expected to appear, but she never did. “Nobody has seen her at one work function,” says a former colleague at Morgan Stanley. Her absence didn’t help with the perception among some at Morgan that Pandit had a bias against women. A female executive who once worked for Pandit says he was uncomfortable having women in anything other than supporting roles. In 1998, one of Pandit’s female underlings filed a legal complaint against Morgan Stanley that resulted in a $54 million sex-discrimination settlement.
Pandit also took heat over his alliance with an Indian equities trader named Guru Ramakrishnan. Pandit and Ramakrishnan had come from the same Brahmin caste in India and had both gone to Columbia before seeking their fortunes on Wall Street. But that’s where the similarities ended. Ramakrishnan was outwardly confident and even arrogant—he once bragged that an astrologer told him he was going to be the head of sales and trading at Lehman Brothers. Many at Morgan considered him unpleasant and prickly. When he lost money, he had a habit of insisting “why he was right and the market was wrong,” says a person who worked with him. Some suspect that Pandit abided Ramakrishnan because he was a useful henchman for the conflict-averse president. “When Vikram wanted to browbeat somebody, he didn’t want to do it himself. He’d send Guru to do it,” says another former Morgan Stanley executive. It also didn’t hurt that Ramakrishnan was worshipful of Pandit: He once cried when he thought he would be unable to fulfill an order Pandit gave him. “Guru was very well protected by Vikram,” says a former colleague. Non-Indians at the company privately referred to Pandit and Ramakrishnan, along with two other Indian executives, as the “Indian Mafia.”
In 2001, John Mack, Morgan Stanley’s charismatic CEO, was edged out by Phil Purcell, the Dean Witter CEO who had merged his company with Morgan. Pandit was not bothered by the change at the top. Former colleagues say he told a group of people that it wasn’t a big loss because Mack wasn’t that smart. (Pandit denies saying this.)
In principle, Pandit and Purcell were aligned on the crucial subject of how much risk to take—neither was entirely comfortable with excessive leverage. By contrast, Zoe Cruz, the president of the fixed-income division, felt the credit markets were ripe for bigger bets and more leverage—and she was bringing in more money than Pandit. Pandit and Cruz jousted for influence with the CEO.
Meanwhile, in 2005, eight veteran former Morgan Stanley executives, known as the Group of Eight, made a run at Purcell’s power, co-opting disgruntled senior executives—including Pandit’s No. 2, Havens—to plot against him. To recruit Pandit, the G8 dangled before him the CEO job at Morgan Stanley—if Purcell was driven out, Pandit would eventually take over. It was a risky move: There was no guarantee that the coup would work. But when Purcell asked Pandit for his loyalty, Pandit refused, betting his chips on Havens and the G8. “He does not like conflict and does everything to avoid it,” says a person involved in the Morgan Stanley battle. “But this was an irreconcilable conflict and he acceded to Havens as he almost always does.”
Given Pandit’s coy style, Purcell was shocked when he learned Pandit had turned against him. “I don’t understand. Vikram was my guy,” he told a friend. “I saved his job three times.” When he learned of the betrayal, Purcell promoted Cruz, ousting Havens and Pandit.
On his way out, Havens walked through the trading floor to standing ovations, but Pandit left the building alone, taking only his raincoat into a cold March drizzle. “It was the most upsetting thing that ever happened to him,” says a friend and former colleague. Morgan Stanley, says another, “was his soul, his identity—home.”
The year that followed was difficult for Pandit. He was out of a job. And his mother, Shailaja, died of breast cancer, a blow that cracked his otherwise cool façade. He nearly broke down while telling a fellow executive the details, pausing to collect himself before he could speak again. In her memory, Pandit started the Maina Foundation for Raising Breast Cancer Awareness.
That same year, 2006, Pandit regrouped by forming a boutique hedge fund called Old Lane Partners with John Havens, Guru Ramakrishnan, and several other Morgan Stanley refugees. The name gave it the air of a Waspy clubhouse, but during a charity roast for Pandit in 2007, an Indian colleague joked that it should be called “Brown Brothers and Havens” because of all the Indians working there. Ramakrishnan, the only one with hedge-fund experience, was named CEO. He spearheaded $500 million in infrastructure projects in India.
Pandit would be the leader of the biggest bank in the world, what amounted to a small country, population 350,000, and he would have at his disposal four airplanes, a helicopter, cars and drivers, chefs, dozens of aides, and the ear of the White House. Better still, running Citi would be his chance for redemption after missing his shot at Morgan Stanley. Once the deal was done, Rubin personally went from division to division praising Pandit to staffers.
Pandit is trying to keep his chin up. “Look, I don’t want to leave until the job is done,” he tells me late last week. “I don’t want to lose the opportunity to put this company in the right place, because I believe I can do it.” Not everyone agrees, of course, and the consensus is that he might already have been replaced at Citi if the government could find anyone willing to take the thankless job. (“The funniest blog was e-mailed to me by a friend,” he jokes wanly. “ ’Pandit Gets to Keep His Crappy Job.’ ”)
this is the only reason he was retained and Not a WASP or a Jew replaced him "Either we’re getting soft in our old age or just kind of exhausted by the CEO witch hunt, but the following sentence in today’s Wall Street Journal actually made us feel a twinge of pity for Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit.
In November, as part of the sweeping rescue, federal officials privately discussed the possibility of replacing Mr. Pandit, who became CEO in December 2007. But the government decided not to remove him, in large part due to a dearth of qualified replacements.
Ugh. Can you imagine if that were you? Like if your boss was all, “We think you suck, but we may as well keep you on and allow you to absorb the blame for the years of mismanagement here, until someone better comes along. Then we can make a big production of firing you, and act like you were the thing that’s been holding us back all this time.” Sure, Vikram hasn’t done the best job and he hasn’t been the best communicator, but he’s only been in the top job for over a year; it wasn’t like he was the one singlehandedly operating the helium pump that caused Citi to swell into a bulbous misshapen monster. (You try wresting the company jet away from Sandy Weill.) It just seems kind of unfair, and totally underminer-y, of the “federal officials” who put that out there. Now how is he supposed to gain the confidence of his own employees — never mind shareholders or the American taxpayers, who may soon own a 40 percent share in Citigroup? It’s just embarrassing.
Of course, unlike the rest of us, Pandit can soothe himself by going over to his private safe, extracting a bar of pure gold, and rubbing its smooth surface up and down his face." by Jessica Pressler
The Wachovia incident, says one longtime friend, “was the first time I have ever seen him go nuts.”
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