(Bloomberg) — Titi Cole was just months away from her long-planned retirement from Citigroup Inc. when Jane Fraser summoned her to a private seating area on the 38th floor of the firm’s Manhattan headquarters.
“She talked about this great role she wanted me to do,” Cole, then head of the bank’s retail operations, recalled of the chat with the chief executive officer two years ago. Cole accepted, becoming head of legacy franchises — while reminding Fraser that she still hoped to leave the world of banking at 50.
That conversation ended up launching Cole into the most demanding period of her career: shutting down or selling the Wall Street bank’s consumer businesses in 13 countries and unwinding its entire Russia business during the war in Ukraine. It’s part of a make-or-break turnaround plan under Fraser to finally, fully move Citi beyond its longstanding problems and boost profitability.
“Citi is — was — very complicated. We’ve had things that we probably should have focused on decades ago that we didn’t,” Cole said. After many efforts to remake the bank after it was crushed in the financial crisis, “we are on the road to rebuild credibility.”
Cole, 51, finally retired from Citi and banking last month, four years after being hired by Fraser from Wells Fargo & Co., where she ran consumer operations after stints at Bank of America Corp. and BMO Harris Bank. After some time off, she’ll help run a nonprofit focused on sickle cell disease.
She leaves a bank that’s in the midst of becoming a leaner, more profitable lender — if Fraser can pull off what’s billed as one of the industry’s most ambitious turnarounds. The firm is still worth less than it was before the financial crisis, and repeated efforts by Fraser’s predecessors to fix things left investors and regulators dissatisfied.
Shareholders don’t fully share Cole’s optimism about the turnaround. While Citi’s 24% stock climb this year outpaces rivals, it still is the only major US bank that trades at a discount to its book value.
Citi’s Restructurings
By the time Fraser became CEO of Citi in early 2021, capping a 17-year rise through its ranks, the firm was grappling with a fresh pair of sweeping regulatory sanctions. The Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency demanded in 2020 that Citi shore up risk management and internal controls, threatening further punishment if the bank didn’t act fast.
“Because of the history, there’s a skepticism,” Cole said, adding she’s confident the executive team — recently replenished with top executives from rival banks — can finally get the job done. “My hope is that over the next five years we really lean into the differentiation because we’ve fixed the things that held us back, and we see the consent order” — she said, knocking on the wooden table — “gone.”
Fraser assigned Cole to oversee the international consumer exits in early 2022, and the CEO has since launched broader restructuring efforts. That’s included eliminating multiple layers of management and cutting tens of thousands of roles — a task that partially fell to Cole to coordinate.
“It’s not easy to say to thousands of people that there is no job,” she said, adding that Fraser asked her to help with the project because of her experience managing the bank’s international retail exits. Overall, the firm plans to shrink headcount by 60,000 people by the end of 2026, Chief Financial Officer Mark Mason said earlier this year.
Fraser and Cole both worked at McKinsey & Co. decades ago, though they never met. “I’d heard of her,” Cole said. “She was legendary” for making partner right after giving birth to her first child, and then opting to work part-time while her two sons were young.
In another parallel — and an indication of how many iterations Citi has gone through in its quest to remake itself — Cole’s final job at Citi resembles one Fraser did in her early years at the firm. As head of strategy, she worked alongside then-CEO Vikram Pandit as head of strategy to exit a swath of businesses and cut nearly 100,000 jobs during the height of the financial crisis.
‘Jane!’
Cole was born in Ithaca, New York, but grew up mostly in Nigeria, where she got her start in banking. “At that point, Nigeria had just deregulated their banking sector, so you went from three stodgy old banks to 20 hip, modern – for there – banks that were more progressive and hiring young people, and I was there for three years,” she said.
She moved to Chicago to attend business school at Northwestern University and then spent just over five years at McKinsey before jumping to banking. She rose through the industry, which has long skewed White and male, to become one of the most senior Black women in US finance.
“I firmly believe that one of the advantages I got was – and this might be controversial – I grew up in an environment where early on I didn’t have to deal with all the stuff that people like me have to deal with in this country,” she said. “And so by the time I moved here, my sense of self was formed. Any implication that I was less than or should feel inferior were firmly rejected.”
She has pushed for more inclusive environments in the financial sector, which she said has improved since the 1990s. “Back then, if the stuff was known, it was maybe not even addressed,” she said. “Now, if it’s known, it’s going to be addressed because the implications and the consequences are too material for these firms to willingly turn a blind eye.”
She eventually worked her way up into Fraser’s inner circle atop the country’s third-biggest bank. One small downside to that is it made her subject to the CEO’s fondness for pranks. At an executive retreat, Cole returned to her room after a cocktail reception, without her glasses, to glimpse what appeared to be a snake.
“I ran out,” Cole said. “Ran out of the building.” She didn’t even put on shoes.
She later learned it was a plastic snake — and that Fraser was behind it.
“Of course immediately it dawns on you: Jane!” Cole said. “I was quite mad at her!”
–With assistance from David Scheer.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
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