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Calls for the head of the Citigroup’s CEO are reaching a crescendo. All major financial newspapers of the world are asking the Mr. Pandit to resign. All indications are that his days are numbered at Citi.

• But more immediately and most important, Citi needs to put a real banker in charge, not someone like Vikram Pandit, who comes from the fund side.
• I’m astounded that he managed to stay on. He has to go if Citi is going to be able to make hard and necessary choices.
• NEW YORK, Nov 25 (Reuters) – Two of New York’s four major daily newspapers slammed the board of Citigroup Inc (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) on Tuesday, with a New York Post editorial calling for all of the directors to be removed and the Wall Street Journal saying most of them did not deserve to remain.
• the board as “grossly negligent” and said the directors “snoozed through the company’s massive build-up of bad debt and rancid security instruments.” NY Post as reorted by Reuters
• “‘Citi never sleeps,’ says the bank’s advertising slogan. But its directors apparently do.” WSJ
• The tabloid Post published photos of current board members as well as former director Rubin under the headlines: “Bozo bankers” and “Off with their heads”. “Some of them are already gone,” the Post said. “If those who remain had any sense of decency, they’d simply quit.” (Reporting by Jonathan Spicer)
• Citigroup is cutting 53,000 jobs shaking the entire US economy. After bailing out Citigroup with $45 Billion, the current management team is still intact!!!

“What went wrong is we had tremendous concentration in the sense that we put a lot of our money to work against U.S. real estate,” Pandit, 51, said today in an interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose show scheduled to air tonight. “It’s a lot easier to get into these situations than it is to get out of them.”

Citigroup’s stock last week fell below $5 for the first time since 1994, sparking concern that customers might pull their money and destabilize the New York-based bank, which has $2 trillion in assets and operations in more than 100 countries. The government on Nov. 23 agreed to support the company with a $20 billion capital injection and a shield against losses on $306 billion of mortgages and other troubled loans. Bllombers

Some corrupt and incompetent CEOs have run their companies into the ground unproficient CEO was Indian born CEO Vikram Mehta. The US tax payer has been stuck with one of the most colossal bills in US history. Each and every citizen is now burdened by the maldroit actions of Mr. Mehta. He is still getting his bonuses.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Citigroup Inc Chief Executive Vikram Pandit on Tuesday blamed prior management for diving too deeply into real estate, causing losses that led to this week’s massive government bailout of the second-largest U.S. bank by assets.

“What went wrong is we had tremendous concentration in the sense we put a lot of our money to work against U.S. real estate,” Pandit said in an interview on PBS’ Charlie Rose show. “We got here by lending money, and putting money to work in the U.S. real estate market, in a size that was probably larger than what we ought to have done on a diversification basis.”

The government late Sunday rescued Citigroup by agreeing to shoulder most potential losses from a $306 billion portfolio of risky assets, and by injecting $20 billion of new capital, in its biggest effort to prevent a large U.S. bank from failing.

Citigroup has lost $20.3 billion in the last year, and many expect further losses from credit cards and other areas tied to the global economic crisis to pile up.

Since closing Friday at $3.77, Citigroup shares have risen 61 percent, and closed Tuesday up 13 cents at $6.08 on Monday. They have nevertheless tumbled 79 percent this year, after closing last year at $29.44. Reuters. (Additional reporting by Noel Randewich and Armando Tovar in Mexico City), (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Bernard Orr)

The CEO of the Citi Bank group is still blaming the last president even though most of the Citi losses happened in the past 12 months under the watch of Mr. Pandit.

Pandit said in the interview that short-sellers, as well as investors worried about Citigroup’s asset quality, were among those who drove the bank’s shares down in recent sessions, and that it was important “that we got control of the situation.”

“I can completely understand how people on Main Street, people who are not close to this industry, would be furious at what’s happened,” he said.

Some wealthy investors have begun or pledged to begin buying Citigroup shares.

A Mexican brokerage controlled by Carlos Slim, one of the world’s wealthiest people, spent about $150 million to buy nearly 29 million Citigroup shares between Nov 19 and Nov 25.

Meanwhile, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal last week said he plans to boost his stake in the bank to 5 percent from less than 4 percent. Reuters. (Additional reporting by Noel Randewich and Armando Tovar in Mexico City), (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Bernard Orr)

Most analysts agree that most of the problems at Citi are based on poor management, starting at the very top.

This does nothing more than temper the problem, but, no, it hasn’t solved anything. We have three main issues to deal with at Citi. The first two are the operational issues and obvious losses that are well known and that the bank and Wall Street have been grappling with for years. The third is the potential for huge losses on off-balance sheet assets that we can’t see. We will see that no one will trust the situation at Citi because of these huge question marks that still remain.

They have lots of capital markets exposure to deal with. The old off-balance-sheet game is over. They’ve already brought some of that stuff back onto their balance sheets, and eventually it will all have to come back on. Who knows how big those losses will be?

One interesting play would be to get rid of its consumer business in its 30 markets outside the U.S., which is exceedingly expensive and higher risk to run. But more immediately and most important, Citi needs to put a real banker in charge, not someone like Vikram Pandit, who comes from the fund side. CNN.Citi’s ‘slow, grudging nationalization’ Monday’s massive rescue package hasn’t solved Citigroup’s problems, says bank analyst Christopher Whalen. By Katie Benner, writer Last Updated: November 24, 2008: 2:31 PM ET

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