How To Think About The Zoe Cruz Ousting, Part II: Vikram and His Voodoo
Those who’ve been paying attention will recall that we love us some Vikram Pandit. He, of that happy, gay, elfin visage; he, of that infectiously intoxicating laughter/unbridled joy even in the face of phenomenal failure; he of that smile that can only say “Christmas in Bombay.” We love him so much that we bought into Citi’s new slogan “Make Vik Smile,” and picked up 400 shares of Citi the same day the company announced its latest trillion dollar writedown. So this, Takeaway # 2 from the NYM article, was particularly hard to take:
A longtime Mack associate, recruitment manager Jerry Wood, said that if Mack made Cruz the next CEO, their old colleague Vikram Pandit, who by then was running the institutional clients division at Citigroup, would raid the company for disgruntled Cruz antagonists. “Vikram has a paycheck in one hand and a voodoo doll of Zoe in the other, and we’re going to lose all these people if they think the future is Zoe Cruz,” he said, according to two people familiar with the conversation.
No, god damn it, no! Vikram isn’t supposed to be an evil, conniving, backstabber. He’s not even supposed to be a shrewd businessman. He’s supposed to be Lil’ Vik, of infectious good cheer, even when there’s nothing to be cheerful about! Since we cannot deal with any evidence to the contrary, we’re going to retreat to our crying room until somebody scrubs the internet (and our consciousness) of this b.s. But first, we’re going to do this.
Yeah, that felt good.
