Who is Vikram Pandit?
With Citigroup posting extremely low quarterly results, talk has again resurfaced that current CEO Charles Prince will soon be on his way out. As for Prince’s replacement, much recent attention has focused on Citi’s new Head of Institutional Clients Group, Vikram Pandit. But who is Vikram Pandit? This question was recently posed by Gregory Corcoran (see his article from Deal Journal). We decided to create an IntellectSpace Knowledge Map to find out more information about Mr. Pandit (Note: the information contained and presented in Knowledge Maps is public information from the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States of America).
Mr. Pandit has spent the majority of his professional career with Morgan Stanley, where he served as Managing Director and Head of the US Equity Syndicate from 1990-1994 and the Worldwide Institutional Equities Division from 1994-2000. He next served as President and Chief Operating Officer of the Institutional Securities and Investment Banking Group at Morgan Stanley from 2000-2005. He left Morgan Stanley in 2005 and later started his own hedge fund, Old Lane, which he then sold to Citigroup for $800 million in 2007. Mr. Pandit also served on the Board of Directors at the Nasdaq Stock Market from 2000-2003. Mr. Pandit received a BS and MS in electrical engineering and also a PhD in finance from Columbia University. He taught finance at Indiana University before starting at Morgan Stanley.
If Mr. Pandit were promoted to CEO of Citigroup, he would most likely bring some his previous employees from Morgan Stanley with him. Mr. Pandit has strong corporate ties throughout Morgan Stanley due to his long career there. Thus, we might see a change in corporate culture if Mr. Pandit were to be promoted. This might not necessarily be a bad thing given Citi’s performance as of late.
Mr. Pandit seems to possess natural business acumen along with the engineering ability to quickly see connections and the results. His former co-workers at Morgan Stanley describe him as able to work with several groups of people at the same time while also maintaining the scholarly ability of objectively being able to scrutinize every bit of data. Given that Citigroup is the largest financial company in the world, Mr. Pandit may very well need all of his skills to turn the company around should he receive a promotion to CEO.
Click here for an interactive version of this IntellectSpace Knowledge Map (Internet Explorer browsers only): http://nv.intellectspace.com
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