Steely Calm of Grandee Who Must Bring Order to Citigroup ; Profile Sir Win Bischoff May Be a Surprise Choice to Lead the Beleaguered Giant Out of Trouble but the Investment Banking World Knows Him to Be a Formidable Persuader

Summary

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YOU HAVE to laugh. In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Mike Mayo, a bank analyst at Deutsche Bank, was quoted as saying: "In talking to a lot of people today, they said, 'Who is he?' That's the repeated phrase.

Where did he come from? How did he emerge almost from obscurity as the interim CEO?" Mayo was referring to the appointment of Sir Win Bischoff as temporary chief executive of Citigroup, America's biggest bank. So, let's get this right: someone at a rival is reported as questioning who Bischoff is. It's the same as a member of the Arsenal backroom staff being asked about the new Manchester United player. He's hardly going to be full of praise, is he? Yet the words of Mayo (who he?) are treated as gospel.

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Steely Calm of Grandee Who Must Bring Order to Citigroup ; Profile Sir Win Bischoff May Be a Surprise Choice to Lead the Beleaguered Giant Out of Trouble but the Investment Banking World Knows Him to Be a Formidable Persuader

There's no doubt that to a US audience Bischoff, who has spent virtually his entire career here in London, is an unknown quantity. But surely not to those involved in banking and not, presumably, to a close follower of the industry at Deutsche. Maybe that's the point.

Perhaps the people Mayo was talking to really were New York cabbies or janitors and so the new head of Citigroup was beyond their knowledge.

To ...

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