Filed under: Citigroup Inc. (C), Goldman Sachs Group (GS)

The New York Times [registration required] makes a compelling case that it’s time for Citigroup’s (NYSE: C) directors to can its long-suffering and persistently incompetent CEO. Here are the six reasons why it’s time for Prince to go:

• Citigroup stock is stuck. At $48 the stock is roughly where it was when Prince took over in 2003.
• Citigroup has had five significant blow ups since Prince took over. On Monday, Citigroup warned that it planned to take a $5.9 billion write-down in the third quarter — causing a 60% profit plunge. This was the fifth time since becoming CEO that Prince had to disclose a major problem to his board.
• Citigroup’s corporate strategy is not working. The idea behind predecessor Sanford Weill’s acquisition strategy was to create an organization which would be able to earn consistently high profits because when one business unit was doing poorly, another one would take up the slack. But the latest earnings miss shows otherwise — problems in the mortgage market hurt Citigroup’s consumer and fixed income units. And with the deal financing business at a standstill — yet another pillar of Citigroup’s corporate strategy is evaporating.

Continue reading Time to replace Citigroup’s (C) Prince with Hank Paulson

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This entry was posted on Saturday, October 6th, 2007 at 7:36 pm and is filed under Stocks Money News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.