Three steps for Pandit to lift Citi's stock

Posted Dec 12th 2007 9:10AM by Peter Cohan
Filed under: From the Boards, Management, Citigroup Inc. (C)

BusinessWeek reports that former Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) Chair Robert Rubin picked Vikram Pandit because Rubin thought Pandit could "drive the vision, drive the execution." I welcome a comment from anyone who can explain what that means. What comes to my mind is that Pandit is going to drive an execution squad behind him ready to gun down anyone who gets in his way.

I am not thrilled with Pandit's ascension and it looks like he is going to turn one of his weaknesses -- a lack of consumer banking expertise in a bank that gets half its income from that business -- into a strength. How so? Pandit looks poised to sell Citi's credit card business. I guess if Citi dumps all the consumer businesses, then he'll know something about the businesses that remain.

To increase the value of Citi's stock, I'd recommend three steps:

Big-bath. First, Pandit needs to examine all the on- and off-balance sheet businesses and take big-bath write-down. This will clear the decks for favorable earnings comparisons in the future.
Capital. Second, he needs to raise much more capital -- which he should announce at the same time he takes those big-bath write-downs.
New corporate strategy. And third, he needs to analyze Citi's different business units based on their profit potential, competitive position, and current market value. He should keep those with strong profit potential and market leadership and dump the businesses with weak profit potential and lagging market position. The question of when and how to dump them depends on whether their market value makes them attractive to sell.

Pandit was a finance professor so he can do this analysis well. Let's see if he can "drive the execution."

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns Citigroup shares.

Tags: banks, C, commercial banking, CommercialBanking, consumer banking, ConsumerBanking, featured, investment banking, InvestmentBanking, Robert Rubin, RobertRubin, vikram pandit, VikramPandit, wall street, WallStreet

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

12-12-2007 @ 10:54AM

Paul Pritchard said...

Why all this talk about selling or closing business segments ?

Were not all the losses and problems the result of risky bets that went bad ? If you take the earnings from your job and go to Las Vegas and lose all your money, is the right strategy and course of action to then come home and quit the job that provides your source of income ?

No....but you might learn to to take such risky bets again in the future.