Saudi prince comes to Pandit’s aid

Wednesday, November 26, 2008 at 2:11 am

After receiving 20 billion dollars in aid from the US govt, Citigroup’s CEO Vikram Pandit has more reasons to rejoice as he has received a personal endorsement from one of his biggest shareholders. Saudi Royal prince Alwaleed Bin Talal was under fire a couple of days ago for deciding to cut over 50,000 jobs.

Reports suggested that Vikram pandit might lose his job but with an endorsement from prince Talal Vikram has defintiely got a new lease of life at Citigroup. “Vikram should be given more time, he’s just taken over. He has my full confidence. I am personally committed to Citigroup. No doubt about that”, prince Alwaleed Bin Talal said.

In the run-up to the federal rescue plan that guaranteed 306 billion dollars of toxic assets of Citi and multi-billion dollar capital infusion in lieu of shares, media was rife with the reports that Pandit was on the verge of losing his job as he had failed to deliver on the mandate to revive the bank.

A day after the mega rescue plan, it has now come out that the authorities discussed whether to replace Pandit as Citi CEO, but there was an disagreement over the issue.

A report from the US business daily Wall Street Journal, which has said that the name of American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault had emerged as a possible replacement, said that the federal officials had a disagreement on whether Pandit was at fault for the company’s problems, while debating the structure of the rescue plan for Citigroup.

Separately, British daily the Financial Times reported that the US regulators during their talks have decided against Pandit’s replacement as they could not find an obvious succesor for him.

The report quoted a participant from the discussions as saying that, “if there was an obvious choice for a replacement for the chief executive officer, that would have levered up the benefit of the package…but there was no obvious queue of candidates.”

Over the past week, media was agog with reports that Pandit was set to lose his job within a year of assuming the office, as he had lost the mandate for steering Citi out of its financial mess.

( This post is from an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by APakistanNews.Com.)

Saudi prince comes to Pandit’s aid

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