Citi’s lesson from history

Euromoney’s past coverage of Vikram Pandit

In 1990, then Citigroup chairman John Reed realized that the bank’s souring portfolio of bad commercial real estate loans was going to take it to the very brink of disaster. By the end of that year, tier 1 capital had fallen to 3.26% of assets, the Citigroup stock price had halved from a 20-year high to a 20-year low, banking regulators were camped in the boardroom and the legal documents for a collapse were being drafted.