Parents confident Vikram will excel as Citigroup CEO

VISIONARY: Citigroup's new CEO, Vikram Pandit, says the company's businesses should be positioned for the future.

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Mumbai: Citigroup's year-long search ended Wednesday night when India-born Vikram Pandit was appointed as its new Chief Operating Officer.

Ever since then, it has been a time for celebrations at the Wall Street veteran’s parent’s house in Navi Mumbai.

His father, Shankar Pandit says, “My daughter-in-law called and said he [Vikram] has been made the CEO. She was quite excited. Later my grand kids called and told me that the news is all over Wall Street.”

At 50, Vikram, the new CEO of the 2.4 trillion dollar-worth Fortune-500 company, has more than 300,000 employees working under him. But given that it’s already cost the company’s former CEO, Sanford Weill, his job due to accumulated losses, Vikram knows the road ahead is rocky.

He says, “The core job here is to look at the company’s businesses. We need to look at them to make sure they are positioned for the future. They need to be looked at one by one, and together as a group. That’s what I’m going to do.”

And is his father worried?

“Vikram is a go-getter and a lateral thinker. He is a good analyst. I am confident that he will be successfully able to tackle all the problems that he is faced with,” says his father.

Vikram and his parent's confidence is not surprising. Even as a child, Vikram had never given his parents reason to worry. He was a bright student who shone academically despite the family's nomadic lifestyle.

As a child, he displayed the willingness to take up new challenges and surmount them.

His father recalls, “We had to move to Kenya, where he had to take up Swahili. Despite that, he stood first in the class."

With the news of Vikram Pandit's appointment spreading, it's not just the immediate family that's celebrating but the whole country, proud to see yet another Indian make a mark on the world of global finance.

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