Lily subscribes to the Wall Street Journal and today there is an article online that reads “Citigroup CEO Plans to Resign As Losses Grow”.
That was not hard to see coming. The article shows that the stock price is currently at $37.73. Last year when I worked at Citigroup the conversation was if it would stay above $50. Having some of my retirement in Citi stock does not concern me; retirement is a long term investment and Citi’s a good company.
But I wonder what his successor will do? Citigroup is a monster because of its size. One, two, or five businesses within it could not drive the stock in any direction. It took a major industry wide hit to drive the stock down that far. The challenge was not (well till recently) keeping the stock from plummeting, the challenge was to get the stock to grow. It just did not move. It was like seeing a group of people say “We’re going to move that glacier with tablespoons”.
I can’t wait to see what happens next. Wonder if my old workplace is going to change dramatically? Getting paperclips was a minimum 6 month exercise and projects were 18 months of paperwork and meetings. It would be cool to hear that global IT gets a fire about so high to make them move.