Thread regarding Citigroup Inc. / Citibank / Citi layoffs

@1xxl+1qhAxlVu
You can put whatever spin you want on it. You can x+y=z all you want. You can justify where we are in 100 different ways. When compared to JPM stock performance for the past three years….well….you like crunching numbers, pull up the charts and you do the math. A CEO’s main performance metric is to lead to growth, stability and a rise in the stock price. Growth and stability, well, layoffs abound. Stock price rise…..the charts speak for themselves.

The layoffs artificially increase the stock price. If Citi isn’t producing revenue with actual sales, profitable products or innovation then they will have to continue to cut staff to keep the stock price up. At this point they will need to fire everyone to keep Citi afloat. Layoffs are not the solution to a struggling business that provides no valuable products.

The first bit of irony here is that someone working at a bank doesn’t know how to perform simple percent increase/decrease calculations. No wonder were in trouble!?!?

Sept 13: $42.37
Today: $51.46
Difference is $9.09
% Increase is 21%

CITI is the only major financial institution who has a book value less than market value. Our average revenue per employee is like $30K but our peers are 30-50% more.

We need to eliminate the fat, which is what our leadership is doing. Is it the right fat? It’s way too early to tell.

I’m really hoping in January the org structures are finalized and the decision making process isn’t as bureaucratic.

CITI has made poor decisions over the last 20 years and the recent leadership has dealt with the burden of our company owning assets that don’t make sense for a bank to own. We owned a golf course in Japan for crying out loud.

Ideally we continue to invest in digital banking and improve our internal technology. We do have lots of redundancies and lots of work can be simplified and streamlined.

I have hope….we shall see how it goes.

It does not matter whether Citi invested in the employees - if the corporation is not getting returns on these investments, they need to cut. Simple - of course stock price will increase - the sad thing is Citi cares only about shareholders, like every other US company today.

The irony of the layoffs is also that they’re letting go people they’ve invested in. When there’s ‘a plan’ to innovate in the future or bring in new products, Citi will have to start looking at outside talent and spend millions in onboarding and training. The way the company works, managers will look at hiring incrementally. Instead of laying off, the leadership needs to look at newer avenues of growth, capitalize on the existing workforce, change the bureaucratic processes and reshuffle as much as necessary.

HR needs to be more proactive in determining a good mix of skill sets for a department. They need to be involved in program success communications, to know how the team fared, who did what to achieve success. Cannot leave it solely on the respective managers. Unless there’s more scrutiny, nepotism is bound to happen.