Citi's New CEO Has An Aggressive Plan To Root Out Bad Executives

Getty Images/Jason Kempin/Staff

Several years after the financial crisis, Citi is still a company in turmoil. Fourth quarter earnings were weak, and it's still trying to retrench after CEO Vikram Pandit was pushed out in October.

Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, new CEO Michael Corbat is trying to distinguish himself and change the culture at a company that has become difficult to manage. He's doing so using data, looking at what executives say they can accomplish and rigorously scoring them on whether they measure up in five different areas. "You are what you measure," he told executives.

As described by WSJ's Suzanne Kapner:

"The 52-year-old Mr. Corbat is hoping to instill the right incentives through the use of score cards that will grade the 50 or so top executives based on a set of weighted goals from five categories: capital, clients, costs, culture and controls. The highest score is 100%; the lowest is minus 40%, said people familiar with the plan."

The idea, according to an exec, is "You said you would do this. Did you?"

Under Pandit, there were score cards for a few departments, but not for everybody. The primary incentives at Citi, as at other banks before the crisis, involved booking huge profits.

Corbat has acknowledged the flaws in this model and his desire to change incentives. He hopes that by making the process more transparent and data driven, he'll be able to see who's responding and who's clinging to the old culture.