Thought You'd Seen The Last Of Meredith Whitney?

Think again!

Author:: Bess Levin
Updated:: Jan 14, 2019
Original:: Dec 8, 2015

She's done with the hedge fund industry, vowing and keeping that vow to never come back after an unfortunate tussle with her largest investor. But if you thought the Dollar Dominatrix was just going to skulk away, never to be heard from again, you thought wrong.

Running a hedge fund didn’t work out for Meredith Whitney, once one of the most famous banking analysts in the U.S. So she’s starting fresh at a Bermuda-based insurer. Whitney has begun at Arch Capital Group Ltd., where she’s overseeing an equity portfolio that had about $800 million under management at the end of September, Preston Hutchings, the company’s chief investment officer, said in an interview...Whitney will oversee a portfolio with money allocated to about eight managers, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and BlackRock Inc., Hutchings said. Arch’s investments include U.S. and Asian stocks.

Meredith Whitney Is Back: Overseeing Stocks at Bermuda’s Arch [Bloomberg]

Perhaps, you thought, that the day Vikram Pandit was abruptly and unceremoniously fired from Citigroup was the end. That we'd lost him for good. That he'd retreat to the his Upper West Side manse and spend his days beefing up his Odd Couple memorabilia collection, or work on that novel about a love that dare not speak its name between a bank CEO and the analyst who only acted like she hated him, or build that Zen garden he'd always wanted that the fucks at Citi never let him have. That he was finished with Wall Street. Well fret not. Uncle Vik wouldn't never do that to you.

The judicial system is no impediment for George Soros's on-again, off-again non-exclusive ex-girlfriend!

Running a hedge fund is out, making Citigroup wish it had never been born is (back) in.

Earlier today, we wondered if, in light of the news that Vikram Pandit had resigned as CEO of Citigroup, analyst Meredith Whitney's opinion of the bank had changed. Choice comments that Whitney has made about the Big C in the past have included: "Citigroup is in such a mess Stephen Hawking couldn’t turn this company around"; "Citi is like an old broken-down Victorian house"; and Citi “has no earnings power, isn’t going to grow, hasn’t been investable in four years." She also once told Maria Bartiromo that the only way she'd change her mind about company would be if she received "a new brain." Still, sometimes analysts change their tune when new blood is brought in and, like former FDIC chair Sheila Bair, perhaps some of her beef with the bank had been a personal dislike of Uncle V. Now that he's gone, is she seeing Citigroup in a new light? Not so much, no. In the wake of CEO Vikram Pandit‘s surprise departure this morning, Whitney, founder and CEO of Meredith Whtney Advisory Group LLC, issued a note cautioning clients to be wary of Citigroup even under new leadership. “Citigroup is ‘the incredible shrinking bank,’ and the least interest of the big four, in our opinion,” Whitney said. “No CEO will be able to change these facts in the near-term. It appears the board feels the same way, as they have appointed an unknown to the outside to the new CEO position, Mike Corbat.” [...] On Tuesday, the stock has wavered between gains and losses on heavy trading volume in reaction to Pandit’s resignation. Shares are up 29% this year through Monday’s close. Despite signs of incremental improvement, Whitney isn’t backing down from her bearish stance. “Any seat in Citigroup’s court should come with a warning label,” Whitney says. Meredith Whitney: No CEO Can Fix Citigroup [WSJ] Earlier: Meredith Whitney Cannot Stress Enough How Little She Thinks Of Citigroup