Vikram S. Pandit has been under incredible scrutiny from the media, investors and the government as he attempts to return Citigroup (NYSE: C) to profitability, but the bank’s chairman, Richard Parsons, suggested in a Bloomberg television interview last Monday that his naysayers do not give him enough credit.
“He has done a tremendous job,” said Mr. Parsons to Bloomberg Television in an interview on Monday.
“We fell into a pretty deep hole and I think it’s clear to the markets now that Citi is climbing out of the hole and will get out of that hole and will emerge, and that’s because an awful lot of people have put in a lot of time and creativity working through what were some enormous problems and Vikram has led that effort.”
When Citigroup faced severe financial trouble, Parsons said that he felt he could play a part in fixing the bank’s woes and that a crisis would have been the wrong time to leave one’s team.
Parsons also addressed the recent controversy over Lehman Brothers, particularly the outrage which has erupted over the firm’s use of creative accounting techniques to temporarily hide as much as $50 billion worth of assets off its balance sheet.
When discussing the Lehman Brothers issue, Parsons said that, “These organizations have gotten to a level of complexity and dynamism, I mean things happen on a day to day basis, hour to hour, minute to minute basis, and so what you’ll find are that people’s recollection of one piece of the elephant that they were touching at any given point in time, putting the whole picture back together at this point is probably not doable.”
