It was hard not to notice, during the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearings, the absence of Vikram Pandit, the C.E.O. of Citigroup. As The Deal points out today, it actually made sense for Pandit not to be part of this particular hearing, which was focussed on the Wall Street origins of the crisis, since he only took over Citigroup in late 2007, by which point the groundwork for the crisis had long since been laid. (Chuck Prince, who ran Citigroup during the heart of the bubble, would be a far more useful witness for the commission, and I assume he’ll be called on to testify at some point.) Nonetheless, the fact that Pandit wasn’t there, and hadn’t been asked to testify, did feel a bit like an implicit commentary on Citigroup’s much-diminished status. In the late nineteen-nineties, Citi was going to be the world’s most powerful bank. Now its C.E.O. can’t even get a seat at the table.
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