Weill bailed out of the stock in 2003.
Another man that became obscenely rich from Citigroup was Robert Rubin, the Treasury Secretary under the Bill Clinton administration who helped Citigroup advocate for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. Without any meaningful cooling-off period, Rubin went straight from his government post to serve on the Board of Citigroup. Rubin received more than $120 million in compensation over the next eight years for his non-management job.
John Reed had a falling out with Weill and retired from Citigroup in April 2000. In Monica Langley’s book, Tearing Down the Walls: How Sandy Weill Fought His Way to the Top of the Financial World. . .and Then Nearly Lost It All, the author reports that Reed owned 4.7 million shares of Citigroup on the date of his retirement. Langley also writes that “Reed immediately began selling his Citigroup shares and laid plans with his second wife to buy a house on an island off the coast of France.”
If Reed sold all of his Citigroup shares over the next three months after his retirement at an average price at the time of $62, he would have realized $291 million in proceeds. According to SEC filings (see here and here) Reed also received a $5 million retirement bonus and a retirement pension of at least $2,019,528 annually.
According to the SEC filings, Reed was also to receive the following: lawsuit indemnifications arising from company employment; an office at Citigroup, secretarial support and access to a car and driver for as long as Reed deemed it “useful.” If Reed decided he needed an office outside of New York City, that would be provided with secretarial support until age 75.
When Weill stepped down as CEO in 2003, he put his General Counsel and personal friend, Chuck Prince, in charge as CEO. Prince took the fall when the company imploded in 2008. For being a good foot soldier to Weill, Prince got an exit package of $68 million.
And then there was Vikram Pandit, a hedge fund manager whom Robert Rubin selected to run the sprawling Citigroup. The Wall Street Journal reported that Pandit took home $221.5 million during his five years at Citigroup.
Sheila Bair, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that guaranteed Citigroup’s debt during the financial crisis, wrote this about Pandit’s persona at a meeting with other bankers in her book “Bull by the Horns”:
“Pandit looked nervous, and no wonder. More than any other institution represented in that room, his bank was in trouble. Frankly, I doubted that he was up to the job. He had been brought in to clean up the mess at Citi. He had gotten the job with the support of Robert Rubin, the former secretary of the Treasury who now served as Citi’s titular head. I thought Pandit had been a poor choice. He was a hedge fund manager by occupation and one with a mixed record at that. He had no experience as a commercial banker; yet now he was heading one of the biggest commercial banks in the country.”
When the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission concluded its findings into what led to the financial crash of Wall Street in 2008, resulting in millions of job losses and foreclosures across America, it made numerous referrals for potential criminal prosecutions to the Justice Department. Three of Citigroup’s executives were among those referrals: Robert Rubin, Chuck Prince and former CFO Gary Crittenden. Nothing ever became of those referrals.
AI
