CEO
Jane Fraser was making huge decisions at Citigroup even before she made history as the
In her 17 years at the company she had: directed the massive restructuring of Citi’s global mergers-and-acquisitions business in the midst of a global financial crisis; run the company’s mortgage business at a time of heightened government scrutiny of banks’ mortgage practices; and overhauled Citi’s Latin America operations, which included downsizing the retail banking and credit card business in Brazil and Argentina and spearheading a new payments system in Mexico that lets consumers make purchases using QR codes on cellphones.
Now, seven months into her new role, Fraser is leading a corporatewide restructuring aimed at unifying and simplifying business operations, improving profitability and returning more capital to shareholders.
Fraser is American Banker’s Most Powerful Woman in Banking for 2021. The honor is less about her shattering a glass ceiling than an acknowledgment of a stellar career and the fact that she runs one of the world’s biggest banks, with $2.2 trillion of assets and some 200,000 employees in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions.
Fraser’s
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She has also made the decision to sell Citi’s retail banking franchises in 13 overseas markets and is leading the company through what she calls a “transformation” of risk management and internal controls systems. The overhaul became urgent last fall when the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency slapped the company with enforcement actions and a $400 million civil money penalty for failing to fix longstanding risk-related problems.
“A fair amount of what we’re looking at … is not just the ‘what’ but also the ‘how,’” Fraser told investors at an industry conference in June. “And this is where our transformation comes together. … It’s making sure we’re positioning our businesses and making the calls as to which ones are going to be the valuable ones and which ones are not. And so we’ll get out of them or really shrink them.” It’s about “focusing, picking the spots and then playing to win, all with the goal of getting the returns up.”
Fraser plans to lay out her full vision for Citi during an Investor Day scheduled for March 2, 2022.
It is too early to grade Fraser’s performance as CEO, but Barclays analyst Jason Goldberg said “she’s off to a good start” in trying to balance the business restructuring with the urgent need to address
“Look, it takes a long time to turn around a big ship and despite downsizing, Citi is still a big company,” Goldberg said. “But … she has the right skill set [and] she’s putting together a plan. Then it all comes down to execution.”
