Morning Coffee: The Citigroup cost-cutter encouraging people to stop managing-up. Goldman Sachs' partner party is coming
Andy Sieg, the newish head of wealth management at Citigroup, looks a little older than his 56 years. This might be because managing wealth managers is a stressful business, and he oversaw 25,000 of them at Merrill Lynch before joining Citi last September. Or it might be because he is wise.
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Sieg needs both his wealth management expertise and his wisdom in his new job at Citi. Citi CEO Jane Fraser sets great store by him and mentioned him twice in the bank's last investor call. «He's off to a strong start,» Fraser said of Sieg a few weeks ago, referring to Sieg as one of a few «selective» external hires.
Sieg's role at Citi is to get to grips with the wealth management business, which is barely profitable. Profits there fell 64% last year, generating a return on equity of just 2.6%. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Sieg said he's cutting «several hundred million» in annual costs from the unit. Unnamed sources 'familiar with the matter' said this will amount to 1,000 jobs.
As jobs are slashed, Sieg is deploying his wisdom to defuse politicking. He's reportedly told people at town halls to spend less time managing-up, and has received a «flood» of supportive emails from people who presumably thought this was a problem. He's also been spending his days travelling the world and talking to people in all the offices where costs will be cut (50% of the revenues and presumably the costs come from outside the US). A planned debit card project has been canceled in the UK. People seem to like him all the same; in Singapore he was asked to roll a pineapple for good luck.
If Sieg gets it right, and people do their jobs instead of focusing on flattering their bosses,
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