Undercover Brother: Will Vikram Take Up The Challenge?

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On the popularity Undercover Boss, wherein CEO's of various companies "slip into the ranks" of their company alongside entry level employees to get a little taste of how the other half of their firm lives, Vikram Pandit has been nominated to appear on an episode of the show. Obviously, seeing Pandito pose as a first year analyst would be phenomenal, and a thrill for the bank's junior rainmakers. There would be night-before jitters, of course, and it'd be hard to watch Uncle Vik sweat as he gets reamed out for screwing up his first pitch book, but clearly that'd be part of the fun. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that VP will accept the offer, unless he's directed to do so by Prince Alwaleed as part the new mandate for 2010 (Operation Make This Thing Work). Rest assured we're working on it, but in the event Vikram chooses to remain ensconced in his zen garden-less office, who would you like to see cast on the show? Lloyd Blankfein rank and filing with the mini-Squid? Stevie mixing it up with the back office and later, forced to make an important decision? Lenny Dykstra reporting for duty as a junior trader at Nails Investment Corp? Ken? Jamie? Cliff? And what do you want them to have to do once they're when they're down there? No wrong answers on this one.

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Vikram Pandit Not Feeling Sandy Weill's Break-Up The Banks Call

About a month ago, retired Citi CEO Sandy Weill set his alarm an hour early, got out of bed when it was still dark, ate a piece of rye toast, told Joan he'd see her when he'd see her, took the elevator downstairs to wait for the car that drove him out to Englewood Cliffs, and went on CNBC to proffer a small suggestion to Wall Street: break up the big banks. Perhaps you heard about it? Not many people were receptive to the notion of Weill giving them advice on the matter, which may or may not have had something to do with the fact that in his day, Weill couldn't get enough of big banks and was the man responsible for cobbling together the behemoth known as Citigroup, an institution so huge it can barely support its own weight. The response by most, in fact, was "Shut it, you old bag." But what about Vikram Pandit, the lucky guy who inherited the place? What did he think of Weill's tip? After giving it some good thought-- really and truly considering it-- for a few weeks, he's decided to take a pass: Citigroup’s chief executive has knocked back the idea of big banks being split up after calls from people such as his predecessor Sandy Weill. But not for the reasons you might think! Pandit actually agrees with Sando because if you think about it, Citi's already been broken up and is basically the bank it was before the merger that resulted in it needing firefighters to use a giant pulley system to lift it out of bed and get around every day. Pandit said Citi, formed in Mr Weill’s time with mergers such as the acquisition of Travelers in 1998, had already gone back to the basics of banking, and aside from some global markets businesses had sold most of the units from that deal. “What’s left here is essentially the old Citicorp,” he told the Financial Times. “That’s a tried and proven strategy. Why did it work? Because it was a strategy based upon operating the business and serving clients and not a strategy based on dealmaking. That’s the fundamental difference.” So we're all on the same page here. Citi Chief Rejects Calls For Bank Splits [FT]