Some say that Vikram Pandit has been sluggish to make changes at Citigroup. They wonder if he is up to the task of reining in the banking giant, streamlining it for the new economy. But today, an officewide memo from North American Markets head Suni Harford, subject line, “Action Taken,” proved that business has been gotten down to. That shit is getting done. For instance:
Many of you noted the poor shape of our pantries across the trading floors at 390G and in the tower at 388G. At the request of the VOE Committee, the pantries were inspected and a full inventory done. You will notice that the pantries have been cleaned, and many of the out dated or malfunctioning equipment (microwaves, coffee makers, hot water dispensers etc) were repaired, replaced, or replacements ordered. Door handles and hinges were fixed, tile regrouted, rugs and refrigerators cleaned. Building maintenance has or will fix all of the ice machines. We’ve also asked also building maintenance to step up cleaning of the refrigerators to a weekly schedule instead of monthly.
And once Suni had strapped those rubber gloves on, he could not be stopped.
And once Suni had strapped those rubber gloves on, he could not be stopped.
The Citi never sleeps, indeed! And they didn’t just stop at the kitchen!
Over 30 broken fax machines were removed or replaced (most of us have moved to PC based desk top faxing) on the trading floors. No more running from machine to machine to figure which ones work and which don’t. We were also able to save some money by shutting down numbers that have gone unused. Finally, we have added scanners in several places to accommodate the creation of a PDF from a hard copy document.
Stock price and business model, though? Still pretty much fucked.
Tackling Problems Big and Small at Citigroup [DealBook/NYT]
