The international banking giant was caught in the sleeping mode and posted a record loss of $9.83 bn for the fourth quarter. There are growing concerns that the new CEO with inadequate experience may not be able to revive the ailing firm. "The most important priority to focus on is productivity. We're looking at our cost structure front to back.'' The byline of world's biggest bank claims that, Citi never sleeps, but the Bank was caught slumbering in 2007. The New York-based financial giant, Citigroup landed in a major financial mess and lost over billions of dollars in bad loans with poor credit records.

Citi has built up in a series of challenging takeovers by the former CEO, Sandy Weill employing around 3,27,000 people in operations across the world ranging from whole gamut of banking and credit cards to investment banking, wealth management and the stock brokerage business through its Smith Barney unit. It has 200 million customers in 100 countries. It is the largest US Bank by assets amounting to $2.4 tn and in 2007, Citi sales topped $96.4 bn. On December 11, 2007, Nagpur born 50-year-old Vikram Shankar Pandit was named successor to Charles Prince, who resigned a month earlier following Citigroup's unpredictably poor quarterly financial performance against huge investment losses. The four year tenure of Prince ended with a loss of $12.8 bn tied with subprime mortgages. Besides, potential additional loses of billions of dollars from home loan and credit card operations.

The new CEO has bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University, New York, and received a doctorate in finance from the same university in 1986. Vikram Pandit was a former employee of in Morgan Stanley known as a savvy investment banker and electronic trading wizard and a veteran Wall Street executive. Before joining Citi, he was President and Chief Operating Officer of the Institutional Securities and Investment Banking Group at Morgan Stanley. In 2005 Citigroup acquired Morgan Stanley's Old Lane Partners, a hedge fund, mostly to Vikram's experience and brainpower. Vikram Pandit became the CEO of the biggest US bank less than five months ago. The acting CEO, Win Bischoff will be the new chairman of Citigroup. (See Box 1 &2)

New CEOs, Wealth management, Citigroup, Institutional Securities and Investment Banking, Banking industry, Electrical engineering, Vikram Pandit, Financial-services Analyst, Union Bank of Switzerland , UBS, Collateralized Debt Obligations, CDOs.