Mike Mayo Suggests Citi Chair Dick Parsons Be Gone In A Fortnight
For the last several years, Mike Mayo has had a fairly contentious relationship with Citigroup. Since telling investors to pull their money and run in October 2007, he's warned people the bank is not to be trusted, detailed whathe believes are Vikram Pandit's cruel and unfeeling ways, and bitched about the fact that their ATMs still require you to use envelopes for deposits. Most recently Mayo took aim at Citi chairman Dick Parsons and while he gets points for dramatic effect, one can't but help feel that a certain other analyst would've made more of a ripple.
One of Citigroup’s most outspoken critics, Mike Mayo, has taken another swipe at the financial giant by calling for the ouster of chairman Dick Parsons. “I think that [Parsons] should leave in the next two weeks,” said Mayo Thursday during a presentation in Midtown Manhattan before a crowd of hedge fund and Wall Street execs.
Clearly the arbitrary two week timeline was dropped so as to suggest Mayo meant business and while it may have worked on a few in the audience, if he wanted to send real message, he would've asked himself WWMWD? And what the woman who got the credit for rating Citi a sell in 2007 even though Mayo did it first would have done was take a sip of her water, stare at the audience for an uncomfortably long pause and then tell them she wanted Parsons gone "yesterday."
