Pandit to axe 18k jobs at Citi

Pandit to axe 18k jobs at Citi

Does 'Re-Engineering' Of Business To Scale Down Empire After Subprime Crisis

Iain Dey

Shortly
after 2 am last Monday morning, Citigroup bankers began to hear their
Blackberry's chirp. Vikram Pandit, the bank's recently installed chief
executive, had just sent an e-mail to every employee in the company.
Headed "Our culture", the memo praised the "remarkable efforts" from
staff and the 200 years of history that ensured Citi would continue to
be the "backbone of world commerce". Citi would become "the greatest
turnaround story of our age," Pandit promised. "We can make this the
best company in the world, bar none."

Within hours, the message had
made its way onto the internet. No sooner was it posted than bloggers
on both sides of the Atlantic had branded Pandit "delusional". Many of
the critics claimed to be part of Citi's 350,000-strong global
workforce.

Pandit certainly has his work
cut out selling his message. Over the next few days, he will begin
signing off second-quarter results that are expected to reveal further
write-downs of at least $8 billion (pounds 4 billion). That would be in
addition to the $40 billion of write-downs the bank has already
announced since the sub-prime crisis erupted last summer.