(This) interview of prince alwaleed is a very interesting read for the past few days citi group has been in a lot of news in the international financial markets with the resignation of their CEO Charles prince after huge huge billion dollar write offs (the likes of which us mortals cant withstand just imagine if i suddenly realized that I had lost 11 billion dollar one fine day well I don’t have that kind of money :) but if I did and someone came up to me and said you lost that amount today pal my first reaction would be OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED and you should not be showing your face to me with that news dont you get scared I might just throw something I can lay my hands on at you hahahahha)

But citigroup is not a person but a business entity and such huge one that it can absorb such huge losses without much hiccup’s but still someone had to face the wrath and it was the CEO as always who had to face the executioner and the axe.
In the interview there are some very interesting pointers like the fact that prince alwaleed points out that they should have a person from banking and goes onto say next time no lawyer DUH how dumb are you who understands banking ?? a person from banking and why did you hire a lawyer in the first place.

The second point is since he is the largest individual share holder and most of his personal net worth is tied up with citigroup what sort of a financial reporting system do you’ll have in place where the write offs can change in 3 weeks?? it is scary very very scary and this is something that needs to be looked at this cannot be the CEO’s mistake he just presented the details given to buy his financial team it is not that he accounted every cent of it by sitting down this discrepancy is not a concern not only for prince alwaleed but also to other shareholders of citi group and raises serious doubts about the management at the top level not just the CEO.

Also the complaining about the the share prices hmmmm well the company is not well managed what do you expect I am still surprised with all this antics that their share prices have not sunk lower yes its a big big entity and that is the only reason that their share holders have been optimistic but if they don’t deliver well the prices can go down south and not up north if the antics continue. Well from all this it looks like the management was sleeping and all the others doing their jobs at citi were sleeping and the scapegoat was none other then the CEO from all of this the important lesson to learn is it is better to own a company then run one :)