It's the latest round of Survivor at Citigroup. A management reshuffle yesterday stripped CFO Edward "Ned" Kelly of power. He was named vice chairman, an advisory role. Chief accountant, John Gerspach takes over as CFO and Eugene McQuade was brought in to be CEO of Citi's North American retail banking unit.
The changes were prompted by the feds (specifically the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s Sheila Blair who has been calling for Pandit's scalp), MarketWatch reported. The government, it seems, plans to let Citigroup linger in a comatose state with a weakened Pandit at the helm.
So, how's the morale over in the Citi clubhouse? Dick Bove on FoxNews compared Citi to the Yankees, with numerous heavy-hitters who want to bolster their own records, but just can't work together.
Meanwhile, the embattled skipper was stoic in the face of the media maelstrom: "The senior management changes I am making today will further help in positioning our company for the future," said Pandit, in a press release.
Monster Pay is Back?
Unconfirmed rumors are that Merrill Lynch is strong-arming BofA, saying that it absolutely needs to set pay back to 2007 levels to stop the flood of people leaving. Whether D.C. will agree is another matter. (Clusterstock)
Watchdog Reshuffles
The head of the SEC's examination division, Lori Richards, is leaving after failing to catch Madoff's multi-billion dollar fraud. (WSJ)
Scam Artists
Since the start of 2009, the SEC has filed 34 cases against fraudulent finance firms, the latest coming yesterday with the arrest of Sky Capital executives (FINS). The economic downturn is responsible for outing these con artists as investor's wallets get tighter. (BW).
Trade Secrets Stolen?
Onto other varieties of crime -- The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. is suing its competitor Arch Insurance Group Inc. for allegedly stealing not only trade secrets but also employees out of its financial products division, 60 out of 250 total employees in that division, to be exact. (FinancialPlanning)
Identity Thieves
It's tough being a job seeker these days: Earlier this year, Aetna Inc. had 65,000 job applicants' personal information compromised when cyber-scammers lifted it off of the insurance giant's servers. A class-action lawsuit is workings its way through the courts. (BusinessWeek)
Layoffs
This week saw 12 layoffs at Dresdner Kleinwort Securities LLC and 45 from The Bank of New York Mellon Corp. as they filed WARN notices with the New York State Department of Labor (NYS Dept of Labor). Key Bank laid off 100 employees and DLA Piper is cutting 121 staff members (TheDeal).