Vikram Pandit

Vikram Pandit has been named as the new CEO of Citigroup. The last one, you might remember, had to fall on his sword a a result of the sub-prime losses.

Citigroup promoted Vikram Pandit to be its new leader yesterday, making the Mumbai-born banking exec the most prominent CEO of Indian descent in corporate America.

Pandit, 50, came to Citigroup just this year after the banking giant paid $800 million to buy the hedge fund he co-founded, Old Lane Partners, which focused on investing in high-flying emerging markets.

Now Pandit has the substantial challenge of cleaning up Citi's massive financial mess.

"The core job here is to look at the businesses and look at them to make sure they are positioned for the future," he told CNBC.

Vikram Pandit had formerly been President of Morgan Stanley:

Citigroup Inc. named former Morgan Stanley President Vikram Pandit as chief executive officer to help the largest U.S. bank recover from at least $9 billion of mortgages losses under predecessor Charles O. Prince.           

      

Pandit, 50, takes over effective immediately, New York- based Citigroup said today in a statement. Win Bischoff, the acting CEO, will be the new chairman, replacing Robert Rubin, the former U.S. Treasury secretary who stepped in to the role when Prince resigned Nov. 4.           

      

After joining Citigroup five months ago as head of private- equity and hedge-fund investments, Pandit must now steer the bank back from its first quarterly loss in 16 years and convince analysts not to cut the company's credit ratings. Citigroup has dropped about 38 percent this year, the worst performance in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, on speculation losses from subprime mortgage investments would force a dividend cut.

Here's the Indian view on Pandit:

Vikram Pandit, a Nagpur-born NRI and a Citigroup neophyte who wowed Wall Street before intense flames began licking the financial world, was on Tuesday named CEO of the world's largest bank in what many see as a rescue mission.

Pandit, whose elevation had been in the air for several days, replaces the charismatic Charles O.

"Chuck" Prince III, who was forced out after the giant bank in November this year after it reported its first loss in 17 years amid a massive financial crisis. Prince had brought him into Citigroup only a few months earlier.

 

A wire report on the whole matter:

And a discussion of what it all means: