This morning’s big story in the Wall Street Journal tells the story that has been rumored since news of Chuck Prince’s ouster from his spot on top of Citigroup broke. Basically, it was Mr. Weill, in Riyadh, with the corporate jet. We read the story, however, so you don’t have to.
• Things had become very strained between Sandy Weill and Prince. Sandy was upset about ballooning expenses and the sometimes forced exit of many of his chief lieutenants. He wanted to be consulted by Prince on how to repair the damage. Prince and his cohorts saw Weill as meddling.
• Despite no longer working at the bank, Weill still wielded power there through his influence with its largest shareholder, Prince Alwaleed. It only took one meeting between the two men to spell the end of Alwaleed’s support for Prince.
• Vikram Pandit—who has been at Citi less than a year—played a very important role in getting the bank to realize the extent of damage the credit market turmoil had done to its CDO portfolio. He led the team that came to chief finance officer Gary Crittenden with the bad news on Wednesday, October 24th. The following Saturday, he was part of the group that gathered at Citi’s Armonk retreat to come to terms with the losses.
• Later that day, Prince drove to New Jersey to visit his mother. That same day, Prince told his wife—Skadden partner Peggy Wolff—and others that he was planning on resigning.
• By Monday, Prince had handed the board his letter of resignation.
The most telling moment of the aftermath of all this comes not from the Journal but from Page Six. That’s where we learned that Prince was spotted on Wednesday at the Four Seasons Grill Room, where he had lunch with Ace Greenberg and Pete Peterson. Prince made his way around the room, giving props to all the seated big-wigs—Page Six name drops Leonard Lauder, Bruce Ratner, David Martinez, Bill Rudin, Richard Holbrooke, Strauss Zelnick, Walter Cronkite and James Wolfensohn—but he was obviously avoiding one man in the room—Sandy Weill. Page Six says that this led to “speculation of bad blood.” Really? You think?
Two Weeks That Shook The Titans of Wall Street [Wall Street Journal]
Hot Entrance [Page Six]
- Posted in:
Citigroup
It Was Sandy Who Done It
How Chuck Prince Got Done In By The Man Who Made Him King
By John Carney — Advertisement —
Comments (7)
Leave a comment
You can log in with your account or comment as a guest below.
- Use the Bloomberg command
NH BLG_DEALBREAKER <GO>
to access Dealbreaker
Was Maria on board giving BJ’s ?
..he went to see his Mommy???
Bad tippers, too. One of them, can’t remember who….it wasn’t Cronkite, ….offered me a Structured Tip Obligation, or “STO” and he got with the other guys and various diners nearby to sign for small parts of that with plans, they said, to “bundle” the tip obligation with other STOs from the week that they possessed. They said I’d get my tip after the Standard and Poor’s lady passed judgement on the STO and, like, I’m still waiting on that and my screenplay to be seen by Mr. Scorcese who is a really nice tipper you know.
That stubborn fool, Chuck Prince, never should have gotten close to the top of Citigroup.
I keep reading about how so few individuals are qualified to run Citi. But honestly, any local community banker would have had a better handle on things than this dumbass.
I think the first post by Lew Dunbar is unnecessary and totally inappropriate unless you have first hand knowledge…this would require someone who has been close to the subject you refer to.
Lest we forget Prince did an excellent job cleaning up after the Capital King when he stepped down.
He was picked out of loyalty rather than ability.
Main issue is failure to execute. Think that Sandy’s lieutenants, especially those in Markets and Banking, would’ve gotten the boot anyway.
It took Pandit’s intervention to realize the extent of the losses.
The fact that it took an outsider, Pandit, to explain to this bunch of knuckleheads what a mess they were in shows just how weak the whole team at Citi was.