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...that he had a choice. Former Citigroup chief Sandy Weill, who created the financial colossus by merging his Travelers Group with Citicorp in 1998, had traveled to Saudi Arabia to tell Citi's biggest individual shareholder, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, that the other Prince had to go. Alwaleed reportedly wanted Weill to return to the helm, but there was little appetite for that on Citi's board...
Instead, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin became chairman, and German-born, London-based Sir Win Bischoff was named acting CEO. A search party of board members is looking for a new boss while, six blocks south of Citi's Manhattan headquarters, the man whom Weill once saw as his obvious successor but booted in 1998, Jamie Dimon, was leading archrival JPMorgan Chase through the credit market's troubles with far less drama...
Almost Shakespearean, no? True, the Bard didn't offer much in the way of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) or special-interest vehicles--two key sources of Citi's pain. He did, however, understand diversification. "My ventures are not in one bottom trusted, nor to one place," said Antonio, the Merchant of Venice. "Therefore, my merchandise makes...
Geographical diversification certainly is helping Citi--the company made twice as much money in Latin America as in the U.S. in the past quarter, and did even better in Asia. But while Weill and Prince did make a few big foreign acquisitions, that global footprint is mainly a legacy of the old, patrician Citicorp. What Weill's Travelers added was big-time investment banking, brokerage and storefront consumer finance. And it's from those parts of the business that most of Citi's woes have stemmed...
Then came the merger with Citi. It was tumultuous--a power-sharing agreement between Weill and Citicorp's John Reed soon fell apart--but at first very profitable. Amid the corporate scandals of 2001 and 2002, though, Citi's investment-banking arm landed in more than its share of controversy and legal trouble. One last big suit, filed by Enron Creditors Recovery Corp., goes to trial in April...