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November 09 袁泉 中午吃飯 一個MM問我喜歡過什麼男明星嗎 費神想了老半天擠不出來一個名字 腦中頓時飄過了兩個名字 都是女人 華人女演員裡 會讓我關注想念期待的 - 周迅 和 袁泉 尤其是袁泉 對她的喜愛似乎超越了她的作品范圍 會關注她的話劇 會聽她娓娓道來的訪談 會時不時掛念一下她和夏雨走得還好不 人如其名 清澈美好平淡自然 有些憂郁 也可以燦爛得融化太陽 剛剛看到她懷孕的消息 親愛的 祝你繼續幸福     November 04 想去的地方 花了兩個多小時翻完了豆豆的照片，和照片後的文字，上百張的工程，丫頭你花了多少時間哪 照片文字加上回憶又帶著我重新踏過法國意大利奧地利，再次經歷了一番春夏秋冬 歐洲之於我如同一個童話世界，每個女孩內心都有童話 在巴黎， 在羅馬，在斯特拉斯堡，任性地和豆豆紅紅說，你們把我丟下吧，我不要回去了 當然，時間會逼迫我從童話世界中走出來，無奈地接受生活的真相，然後執著的我只有對著28GB的照片...還有那個屬於三個女孩（人）的十年約定...試圖抓住美好童話的最後一絲尾巴 二十五歲了，我還是那個兔毛尖端的虱子，跳著蹦著想去探究外面的世界 只不過我是只會冬眠的虱子，正如現在，一邊安安分分（表面）勤勤懇懇地工作著，一邊YY著一個人拖著箱子帶著夢想去“流浪”。。。  August 19 Interesting...Happen to go into this website and find below. Hoho... http://portal.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81350573961&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&trk=0&CFID=47897996&CFTOKEN=65413874
July 19 纪念一下 开始做菜了 中午不知道哪根筋搭错了 突然有种自给自足解决温饱的欲望 跑到超市大肆采购 小试牛刀 室友冲锋当小白鼠 评价味道不错没吃倒人 于是晚上再接再厉 拖来了多一只小白鼠 开始尝试高难度菜式 求救热线打通老爸求秘方"可乐鸡翅到底要加哪些料阿...???" 发现做菜的过程远比吃菜要漫长很多 手忙脚乱之后 "大餐"还算丰盛 结果...盐放多了, 好渴啊现在... April 19 稀里糊涂掉进了天堂 4月7日, 我问晶, 推荐个地方吧, 打算easter的假期一个人出去走走 晶说, medan如何, cheap & exotic! 我google了一下 - 棉兰, 菲律宾南部政局动荡的地方......晕, 我不要冒着客死他乡还死无全尸的危险......我是去散心, 不是去找死... 被晶全面打击了去广州的计划后, 晶慷慨地舍命陪君子, 查遍所有的廉价航空4.9-4.12之间东南亚安全地带的航班, 最后决定了KK - 有着东南亚最高山脉的地方. 只是我俩都申明, 不爬山!         April 05 綺貞 太阳 ☼ 綺貞說 盡快離開悲傷 還有 不要忘記 你可能就是別人的一顆太陽 ☼ 我早已淚流滿面 步入中年的她 依舊清麗的娃娃臉 依舊簡單清新暖暖的聲音 依舊愛穿著白衣抱著吉他在黑暗中閉著眼歌唱 館場內的空氣因為她而乾淨 每個角落都感動到了極點 愛她的真誠 對音樂 對生活 一晃十多年 還有她帶來的感動 穿透身體的感動         March 18 [转载一篇, 长, 感兴趣的可以当故事读, 当然故事还没结束]The Most Powerless Powerful Man on Wall StreetHow Citi CEO Vikram Pandit finally reached the top— just in time to see the financial system, Citigroup, and all his dreams come crashing down.
“Would you just raise your hand?” The congresswoman from California peers down through her spectacles at the eight men in front of her, their faces as dour as war criminals at a tribunal. It’s the congressional Finance Committee hearing in February, and Maxine Waters has demanded to know who among America’s investment-bank CEOs had the gall to take billions in federal bailout money and then raise credit-card rates on the very taxpayers who’d helped prop up their sorry companies. Heads crane to look. Then the long, thin arm of Vikram Pandit, the chief executive of global banking conglomerate Citigroup, goes up in the air like a flag of surrender. When it drops back down again, Pandit’s shoulders slump, a weak smile of acquiescence on his face. Behind him, the Reverend Jesse Jackson glowers with righteous anger. “Thank you,” Waters says curtly. It’s a moment of withering humiliation for Pandit, but it’s only the latest disgrace: In the preceding months, he has barely clung to his job, as Citigroup’s board considered replacing him with a former media CEO and offered the government his head in exchange for the billions in bailout money. President Obama himself publicly rebuked him for ordering a new $50 million jet. Forced to break up Citigroup against his own strategic aims, he’s taken so much government aid that one i-banker jokes that Citi has become “the Wall Street version of the DMV.” The rank and file at Citi, their net worth destroyed, accuse him of cronyism and absentee leadership. He’s become a virtual corporate eunuch, his options narrowed to nil, making a $1 salary as a public display of humility. Pandit is trying to keep his chin up. “Look, I don’t want to leave until the job is done,” he tells me late last week. “I don’t want to lose the opportunity to put this company in the right place, because I believe I can do it.” Not everyone agrees, of course, and the consensus is that he might already have been replaced at Citi if the government could find anyone willing to take the thankless job. (“The funniest blog was e-mailed to me by a friend,” he jokes wanly. “ ‘Pandit Gets to Keep His Crappy Job.’ ”) It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When he arrived at Citi in late 2007, Vikram Pandit was the definition of the fabled “smartest guy in the room,” the kind of brainy financial engineer Wall Street invented—and rewarded richly—over the past twenty years, as complex instruments like derivatives fueled wealth creation. He saw hidden folds in complicated problems that others didn’t see, and when he spoke, which was not often and always quietly, people listened. But for all his brains, he never quite seemed to be in control of his own destiny. Fourteen months later, Pandit is the latest to be blamed for everything that is wrong with Wall Street, the smartest guy in a room full of idiots. In the 1976 Columbia University yearbook, Vikram Pandit appears with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers: He’s a slight young man with huge black-framed glasses perched over a thin, aquiline nose and a sparse mustache, his thin neck poking out of a too-big plaid lumberjack shirt. He looks cheerful among the academic elite. Pandit had moved to Queens from a town in central India when he was 16, the son of a middle-class pharmaceutical executive. His family was of the Maharashtrian Brahmin caste, traditionally known as priests and scholars (Pandit, in fact, means “priest” or “learned person”), who frequently enter the business class in Indian society. When Pandit was born, an astrologer told his family that “whatever this boy touches will turn to gold.” A spectacular student, Pandit studied summers and earned an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering in only three years. He then turned to finance and earned a doctorate after publishing a dissertation involving a crushingly complex financial puzzle. After teaching economics at Columbia, he moved to Bloomington to take a job as a professor of finance at Indiana University. This was a time when lowly professors at midwestern schools were suddenly being offered entry into the world of high finance. Wall Street needed so-called quants who could understand sophisticated investment structures like derivatives. Pandit saw an opportunity. He started as an associate at Morgan Stanley in 1983, among the first Indians to be employed at the firm. Almost immediately, his colleagues recognized his sharp mind. “Whenever we had a tough problem, whatever the complex structuring was, we’d send Vikram to do that job,” recalls Anson Beard, an advisory director at Morgan Stanley and a veteran of the company’s seventies vanguard. Why he wasn't a natural-born leader.“There were probably only five or six people who really understood the balance sheets and the trading positions,” says Barton Biggs, a former colleague at Morgan who now runs Traxis Partners. “And none of those people were members of the executive committee. Vikram did understand it and could explain it.” He was consistently prescient on sophisticated trends in financial theory. “He was talking about fat-tailed risks fifteen years ago,” says a former colleague from Morgan, referring to the concept eventually popularized in Chris Anderson’s 2007 book, The Long Tail. Others described Pandit’s uncanny ability to “see around corners,” predicting, for instance, the rise of hedge funds in the late nineties. Pandit may have been Morgan Stanley’s resident genius, but he was nobody’s idea of a natural-born leader. He lacked charisma, detested glad-handing, avoided confrontation, and generally struck people as awkward and uncomfortable. The guy who seemed to have everything he didn’t, Pandit couldn’t have helped but notice, was John Havens. Born to wealth and married to an heiress of the Doubleday book-publishing fortune, Havens hunted birds, played golf, smoked cigars, and knew his way around private clubs and charity dinners. His unusual looks—he was hairless owing to the rare skin disease alopecia universalis—were offset by his flashy ties, suspenders, and meticulous tailoring, “a walking advertisement for a bespoke clothing store,” according to one of his former colleagues at Morgan. His status among the elite members of the firm, old-line executives like Anson Beard and Parker Gilbert, was high. He played the part to the hilt, carrying himself with a martial bearing and once standing on a desk in the trading floor and exulting: “I bleed Morgan Stanley blue!” Havens and Pandit had an unlikely but natural affinity. As a sales trader in the equity division, Havens sold clients the complex securities Pandit crafted. When Pandit came up with a new investment instrument, Havens wasn’t afraid to say “this is a shitty product you’re coming up with,” says a mutual colleague of the men. “[Pandit] came to appreciate Havens’s abilities not only to sell things but to help with the creation of the product.” But Havens wasn’t just a business partner; he was also a kind of social prosthetic for Pandit. In exchange, Havens found Pandit’s brainpower useful in attaining higher corporate ground. By the late nineties, they had risen through the ranks of the equity division. When Neal Garonzik, the head of equities, left in 1997, both were up for the job. “There are two kinds of generals,” says Beard. “Some generals who can fire up the troops and take any hill, and some generals who sit in a tent and figure out which hill. Vikram is a terrific strategist. John is a leader.” In this instance, the strategist won out. Pandit was named Garonzik’s replacement, and Havens became Pandit’s No. 2. “I know John was disappointed, but he never let it affect his relationship,” says a colleague of the two men. “In fact, it grew stronger.” His closest friends describe Pandit as quietly backing into power, too meek to grab for it directly, never ambitious in the pejorative sense of the word. To them, Wall Street was a meritocracy and the best and brightest mind, however passive and un-Gekkolike, had simply risen to the top in an orderly and natural fashion. After all, for every hard-charging trader who broke phones and kicked in doors, you needed a Vikram Pandit who could hedge against overzealousness. “Many people wanted to see him get his chance in the sun,” says Paul Kimball, a former Morgan colleague. But with his newfound power came critics and rivals who saw Pandit’s dry, quiet ways as hubris and political cunning rather than shyness and humility. When he became president of investment banking at Morgan Stanley in 2000, “that’s when he said, ‘I am a king,’ ” says a former Morgan executive who is critical of Pandit. Pandit was exceedingly cautious in his leadership role, always looking for ways to make money with a minimum of risk. When hedge funds came along, his idea was not to invest directly but to sell brokerage services to them. He would often avoid acting on a problem until he felt he’d perceived every possible risk involved—and the delays would frustrate his subordinates (“analysis paralysis,” they called it). He rarely expressed strong opinions in meetings, instead chiming in with a single Socratic question. “A lot of people were a little afraid of him,” recounts one former colleague. “He was so smart, and they didn’t want to look dumb.” While
Pandit observed and listened, Havens would execute Pandit’s strategies
while another close aide, an outgoing and socially connected marketing
man named Don Callahan, would sound out underlings and keep tabs on
political machinations. To critics, it seemed that Pandit was merely
trying to avoid risk to his career. “His attitude was all about, ‘I am
not going to do anything, decide anything, that’s going to get in the
way of an upwardly mobile career trajectory,’ ” says one of his Morgan
Stanley antagonists. But his critics couldn’t deny the power of his
intellect, and his superiors were beguiled by it. The subtle cultural bias he encountered at Morgan Stanley. Pandit made gestures toward the trappings of Wall Street success, buying a house in Greenwich, Connecticut, next to former Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld and sending his children, Maya and Rahul, to Trinity School on West 91st Street (Pandit eventually joined its board of trustees). In most ways, however, Pandit remained a cultural outsider: While he paid dues to the exclusive Country Club of Purchase, part of Morgan Stanley’s unofficial social agenda for managing directors, a friend says Pandit never actually saw the inside of the club. His parents lived with him for part of the year in his Manhattan apartment, and Pandit drove the extended family around in a minivan. A fellow executive who once saw him at a movie theater was shocked to see Pandit out of his usual C-suite suit and tie, wearing an oversize anorak, stonewashed jeans, and white sneakers. He looked like “a nerd in the computer faculty,” says the onlooker. Pandit was of two worlds, and the subtle cultural bias at Morgan Stanley didn’t make it easy to fit in. His wife, Swati, was frequently invited to Morgan Stanley events in which wives were expected to appear, but she never did. “Nobody has seen her at one work function,” says a former colleague at Morgan Stanley. Her absence didn’t help with the perception among some at Morgan that Pandit had a bias against women. A female executive who once worked for Pandit says he was uncomfortable having women in anything other than supporting roles. In 1998, one of Pandit’s female underlings filed a legal complaint against Morgan Stanley that resulted in a $54 million sex-discrimination settlement. Pandit also took heat over his alliance with an Indian equities trader named Guru Ramakrishnan. Pandit and Ramakrishnan had come from the same Brahmin caste in India and had both gone to Columbia before seeking their fortunes on Wall Street. But that’s where the similarities ended. Ramakrishnan was outwardly confident and even arrogant—he once bragged that an astrologer told him he was going to be the head of sales and trading at Lehman Brothers. Many at Morgan considered him unpleasant and prickly. When he lost money, he had a habit of insisting “why he was right and the market was wrong,” says a person who worked with him. Some suspect that Pandit abided Ramakrishnan because he was a useful henchman for the conflict-averse president. “When Vikram wanted to browbeat somebody, he didn’t want to do it himself. He’d send Guru to do it,” says another former Morgan Stanley executive. It also didn’t hurt that Ramakrishnan was worshipful of Pandit: He once cried when he thought he would be unable to fulfill an order Pandit gave him. “Guru was very well protected by Vikram,” says a former colleague. Non-Indians at the company privately referred to Pandit and Ramakrishnan, along with two other Indian executives, as the “Indian Mafia.” In 2001, John Mack, Morgan Stanley’s charismatic CEO, was edged out by Phil Purcell, the Dean Witter CEO who had merged his company with Morgan. Pandit was not bothered by the change at the top. Former colleagues say he told a group of people that it wasn’t a big loss because Mack wasn’t that smart. (Pandit denies saying this.) In principle, Pandit and Purcell were aligned on the crucial subject of how much risk to take—neither was entirely comfortable with excessive leverage. By contrast, Zoe Cruz, the president of the fixed-income division, felt the credit markets were ripe for bigger bets and more leverage—and she was bringing in more money than Pandit. Pandit and Cruz jousted for influence with the CEO. Meanwhile, in 2005, eight veteran former Morgan Stanley executives, known as the Group of Eight, made a run at Purcell’s power, co-opting disgruntled senior executives—including Pandit’s No. 2, Havens—to plot against him. To recruit Pandit, the G8 dangled before him the CEO job at Morgan Stanley—if Purcell was driven out, Pandit would eventually take over. It was a risky move: There was no guarantee that the coup would work. But when Purcell asked Pandit for his loyalty, Pandit refused, betting his chips on Havens and the G8. “He does not like conflict and does everything to avoid it,” says a person involved in the Morgan Stanley battle. “But this was an irreconcilable conflict and he acceded to Havens as he almost always does.” Given Pandit’s coy style, Purcell was shocked when he learned Pandit had turned against him. “I don’t understand. Vikram was my guy,” he told a friend. “I saved his job three times.” When he learned of the betrayal, Purcell promoted Cruz, ousting Havens and Pandit. On his way out, Havens walked through the trading floor to standing ovations, but Pandit left the building alone, taking only his raincoat into a cold March drizzle. “It was the most upsetting thing that ever happened to him,” says a friend and former colleague. Morgan Stanley, says another, “was his soul, his identity—home.” Pandit forms his own boutique hedge fund.The year that followed was difficult for Pandit. He was out of a job. And his mother, Shailaja, died of breast cancer, a blow that cracked his otherwise cool façade. He nearly broke down while telling a fellow executive the details, pausing to collect himself before he could speak again. In her memory, Pandit started the Maina Foundation for Raising Breast Cancer Awareness. That same year, 2006, Pandit regrouped by forming a boutique hedge fund called Old Lane Partners with John Havens, Guru Ramakrishnan, and several other Morgan Stanley refugees. The name gave it the air of a Waspy clubhouse, but during a charity roast for Pandit in 2007, an Indian colleague joked that it should be called “Brown Brothers and Havens” because of all the Indians working there. Ramakrishnan, the only one with hedge-fund experience, was named CEO. He spearheaded $500 million in infrastructure projects in India. Early on, Pandit and Havens went looking for investors and arrived at the door of Citigroup. Pandit had a friend in Robert Rubin, the company’s director. Rubin first saw Pandit at a private panel discussion in 1999 that was hosted by former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt. He was so impressed by Pandit’s intellect he asked to meet him. The two men struck many as kindred spirits. Like Pandit, Rubin favored intelligence over less quantifiable assets like charisma. In their views, such retail-business talents were secondary to cool analysis. “Vikram,” says Barton Biggs, “is an Indian version of Bob Rubin.” Citi executives vetting Old Lane refused to stake client money on the investment, feeling Pandit’s team didn’t have enough experience. If they wanted Citi to invest, then Citi’s top executive, chairman and CEO Chuck Prince, would have to personally approve the deal. And Prince did: Citi invested $100 million in Old Lane. Old Lane was performing poorly, earning only a net 3 percent return in 2007, worse than a money-market account. It was clear to everyone who knew him that Pandit was unhappy managing a hedge fund. He was restless and dissatisfied. “He wanted his shot at running something really big,” says Biggs. Rubin and Citigroup were eyeing Old Lane as an acquisition—not for high-yield returns, but for Pandit, a potential candidate to one day run Citi. In April 2007, Pandit sold Old Lane to Citi for $800 million, a price tag that boggled the minds of Wall Street observers. Pandit personally reaped a huge bounty, what amounted to $165 million in cash. With his windfall, he bought a ten-room, $17.9 million co-op apartment on Central Park West, the former home of the late actor Tony Randall. Rubin made little pretense about why Citi had spent so much money: He publicly called Pandit “a genius.” Pandit was made chief executive of Citi Alternative Investments (CAI), the hedge-fund arm of the company under which Old Lane now resided. At a company town-hall meeting, Rubin stood by him beaming, as Pandit announced that he would double the company’s hedge-fund business over the next few years. Havens, Pandit’s de facto No. 2, explained to their new underlings at CAI that “we need good DNA in here”—which meant, says one former Citi staffer, purging their colleagues and bringing in “a bunch of rejected Morgan Stanley guys.” Citi executives bristled at what they considered Havens’s swaggering leadership style. “He made it very clear he thought they were all morons,” says the former Citi executive. Pandit rarely showed up at CAI, instead spending time in Citi’s corporate suite near the top brass on Park Avenue. The hedge-fund wing was just a place to park until the real opportunity presented itself. Six months later, Pandit was asked to investigate the bank’s books and discovered what would turn out to be billions in subprime losses—leading Chuck Prince to step down as CEO. Rubin immediately lobbied to have Pandit replace him, but there was unexpected resistance from a number of board members, including Alain Belda, chairman of Alcoa, and C. Michael Armstrong, the former AT&T CEO, who did not believe Pandit was ready to lead and thought Citi had overpaid to get him in the first place. Meanwhile, Citigroup founder Sandy Weill was advocating for Tim Geithner, a former protégé of Rubin’s then working for the New York Federal Reserve (and now, of course, Treasury secretary). Rubin began telling board members that Pandit might leave if they didn’t give it to him, making a mockery of the $800 million they’d paid for his hedge fund—a claim that detractors took as explicit arm-bending. Rubin
sold Pandit as the consummate problem-solver and a man who could see
around corners—the sorts of descriptors that were often applied to him.
Pandit’s pedantic style and reputation for risk-aversion dovetailed
with the going mood, a balm for the go-go era of high risk that was
battering the investment banks. After all, hadn’t Pandit resisted the
leveraged risk favored by Mack and Cruz at Morgan Stanley? He becomes Citi's leader. Rubin ultimately prevailed, and the board of directors at Citi agreed to make Pandit CEO in December 2007. A confidant warned Pandit that he should think twice about taking the job. Citigroup was an unwieldy monster: A so-called financial supermarket built by Sandy Weill out of the merger of Travelers Group and Citicorp in 1998, Citi had a global reach that, in theory, was supposed to give it extraordinary leverage. But with the credit markets collapsing, the bad parts could start bringing the good parts down with them. The conversation over whether the business model was still relevant was reaching a fever pitch. “Vikram, this is impossible,” the confidant said. Pandit replied, “No, this is a terrific opportunity.” Pandit would be the leader of the biggest bank in the world, what amounted to a small country, population 350,000, and he would have at his disposal four airplanes, a helicopter, cars and drivers, chefs, dozens of aides, and the ear of the White House. Better still, running Citi would be his chance for redemption after missing his shot at Morgan Stanley. Once the deal was done, Rubin personally went from division to division praising Pandit to staffers. Pandit laid out an ambitious three-year plan for Citigroup’s future: centralizing management, restructuring, selling billions in assets, and raising capital as a buffer against further credit collapse. (Rubin personally cruised a golf course with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in Abu Dhabi to procure a $7.5 billion investment.) Pandit studiously read books on Citibank history, hoping to divine a common thread running from the company’s roots as City Bank of New York in 1812 to its present incarnation and perhaps gain an inkling of the pride he’d felt for Morgan Stanley. He brought in long-retired Citi executives to talk about the old days and reanimated the company’s seventies ad campaign, Citi Never Sleeps, to try to recapture its past glory.
The main issue on the table was whether the “supermarket” model could be maintained. One trusted associate advised Pandit that he had to break up the company to make it work. Consultants from McKinsey & Co. offered the same suggestion in a report. Pandit rebuffed those suggestions. Some say that breaking up Citigroup was never truly an option. A senior executive at the company suggests Pandit had an implicit directive from the board of directors, especially Rubin, to keep Citigroup together, thereby preserving the legacies of founder Sandy Weill and Rubin himself. Rubin and Weill had been friends since the late nineties, when Rubin served in the Clinton administration. It was Rubin who helped push through the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that effectively allowed the merger of Travelers and Citicorp. A year later, Weill made Rubin a board member at the company he helped create, paying him a salary of $17 million a year. Pandit chose to embrace the challenge of Citi in the only way he knew how: He elevated his Old Lane team to positions of power, bringing in Don Callahan, who had been working in marketing at Credit Suisse, to be his chief administrative officer and promoting Havens to head of investment banking. (Ramakrishnan opted to remain in the offices of Old Lane.) Perhaps the most powerful member of Pandit’s circle of lieutenants—which became known as the “Gang of Five”—however, wasn’t a Morgan Stanley alum but Lewis Kaden, a loyal Rubin associate. Kaden, a lawyer who’d worked for the powerful DC firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, had been friends with Rubin since the eighties, when Rubin was head of Goldman Sachs. Now he was involved in everything from the $400 million Citi Field naming project to negotiating with government officials, in addition to penning Rubin’s correspondence. A common internal joke at Citi was, “If Bob Rubin turns a corner too fast, Kaden breaks his nose.” Pandit often stayed in his corner office on Park Avenue for hours, Kaden and Callahan serving as his links to the outside world. When one senior executive finally met with Pandit, both Kaden and Callahan afterward gave opposing takes on what Pandit had meant. At a time of duress, Pandit appeared disconnected from his staff. On Pandit’s trip to Baltimore last year with the head of Citi’s investor relations, there was a third passenger onboard the company helicopter to whom Pandit didn’t say a word. When the investor-relations man finally asked which division of Citi he worked in, they learned that he was a stranger who had accidentally boarded the wrong helicopter. To Pandit’s mind, traditional morale-building leadership had always been an ephemeral concern. He knew he was no inspirational leader, instead seeing his mission as keeping the troops at bay while he spent his time making sense of what was happening to the banking industry. Messy human affairs were best outsourced to his trusted soldiers. But the perception that Pandit was hunkering down with select lieutenants gave way to accusations of cronyism by people who felt he was not taking advice from longtime Citi executives, including Michael Klein, Citi’s vice-chairman, and Sallie Krawcheck, the head of wealth management. Citigroup's foundation begins to crumble. Pandit’s problems with Krawcheck—onetime CEO candidate and, incidentally, the top female executive at Citigroup—came to a head over how to handle Smith Barney, the brokerage arm of the company. There was a major fire to put out. Clients were suffering extraordinary losses on Citi’s alternative investments and so-called auction-rate securities, causing brokers to exit Citi in big numbers. E-mails from Smith Barney staffers poured in expressing dismay that Pandit wouldn’t reimburse clients who had lost money under Citi’s management. By this time, Krawcheck was already considered a thorn in Pandit’s side for continually arguing that the risk to clients had been higher than advertised and giving back a portion of the proceeds would protect the franchise. She was met with resistance from Pandit’s team: Havens was against reimbursing and yelled about it in a telephone conference. But the board sided with Krawcheck, asking that Citi take action with clients. By September, Havens told Krawcheck that two major components of her division, research and the private bank, would now be under Havens’s management in the banking division, ostensibly part of overall restructuring. Krawcheck felt they were stripping her of power and essentially forcing her out. She announced her departure in September, leaving the company without an exit package. During all this, Sandy Weill, who had originally hired Krawcheck, was breathing down Pandit’s neck. Concerned about the company’s stock price, Weill personally asked Pandit to buy back shares along with him, in a show of public confidence. Pandit agreed, according to a person close to Weill. But when Weill started buying back stock and Pandit didn’t do it right away, Weill complained loudly to friends. Pandit stopped returning Weill’s calls altogether, referring him to Callahan. (According to two people close to the situation, Pandit and Weill have spoken exactly twice since Pandit took over Citigroup; Pandit has since bought $8.4 million in Citi shares, although at a lower price than Weill did.) Even within the ranks of his own lieutenants, there was infighting. Old Lane Partners was on the skids, and Ramakrishnan rushed to Pandit to secure a large capital infusion to keep it from going under. Pandit promised him $2 billion. When Havens found out about Pandit’s promise, he was furious, demanding to know how Pandit could have done such a thing without consulting him. Caught between two old friends, Pandit listened to Havens, as he usually did in the end. The Wall Street Journal published a story about the end of Old Lane, featuring Pandit’s stippled headshot and calling the event a “blow to CEO.” Feeling betrayed, Ramakrishnan threatened to sue Pandit for a better exit deal. The men reportedly no longer speak. “I think Vikram is more upset about it than Guru,” says a mutual acquaintance. “He’s disappointed in Guru.” In September, the markets plunged along with the collapsing credit markets, and the foundation of Citigroup began to crumble. While Pandit had managed to accrue $60 billion in capital to shore up finances, it wasn’t near enough. Pandit was smart enough to know what needed to be done: He had to secure more access to cash, lots of it. As banks began to fail, he bid $1 a share for the commercial bank Wachovia, which the government was hoping to quickly marry off and save from dissolution. It was a cheap way to get access to cash deposits that could shore up Citi’s credit problems. As a deal drew near a close, Pandit appeared confident that he had achieved a much-needed victory. Perhaps a little too confident. Pandit and Citi had relied on what amounted to the legal version of a handshake to secure the deal with Wachovia. And they dragged out the process while trying to separate Wachovia’s wealth-management division from the rest of the company, feeling it had too much overlap with Smith Barney. (Lew Kaden told a private group, “We’ve got 15,000 complainers, we don’t need 15,000 more.”) Pandit left just enough room for Wells Fargo to swoop in with a bid for $7 a share and snatch the bank out from under Citi. Pandit was beyond infuriated. After learning of the coup during a middle-of-the night phone call, he angrily demanded to senior executives at Citi that they pull Wells Fargo’s credit lines. “Pull their fucking lines!” he screamed. “Pull their fucking lines!” A senior executive in the room calmly explained that Citigroup had no business with Wells Fargo. There was nothing they could do. Ultimately, Citi filed a lawsuit against Wells Fargo for breaching what Citi considered an exclusive deal. What no one had realized at the time was that this was effectively Pandit’s last stand before the markets would lay all previously made plans to waste. The failed bid for Wachovia was a major blow to investor confidence, and Citi’s stock tumbled as the markets buckled and Lehman Brothers folded. Within a week, Pandit was lined up with the other banking CEOs to meet with then–Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. With the government fearing massive bank failures and a wider financial meltdown, Citi accepted $25 billion in federal bailout money in exchange for issues of preferred Citi stock. How had Citigroup come to this? Increasingly, Pandit was acting out of character, barking profanities in the hallways. One former Citi executive says that the head of human resources expressed concern about Pandit’s expletive-laced outbursts he’d had in the C-suite. (Pandit denies any such outbursts.) The Wachovia incident, says one longtime friend, “was the first time I have ever seen him go nuts.” Citi’s stock declined week after week. During a town-hall webcast meant to quell concern on November 17, Pandit forecast massive layoffs and felt the need to explain in his usual academic fashion what exactly a bank did (“A bank takes deposits and puts them to work”), which baffled the closed-circuit audience of veteran bankers. As Pandit flailed, the stock declined nearly 50 percent in four days, dipping below $5 a share, the trigger price at which pension funds would sell en masse and the bank would collapse completely. When Pandit took over, the stock had been at $52. That Friday, November 21, reports surfaced that Pandit’s job was in the balance. According to a person familiar with the discussions, the name of former Time Warner chief Dick Parsons, a Citi board member and onetime head of Dime Savings Bank, was floated as a possible replacement. News of Pandit’s possible ouster furthered the stock’s fall. A team of Citi executives led by Ned Kelly, a seasoned negotiator who had been friends with Havens for many years, began talks with then–New York Federal Reserve chairman Tim Geithner’s team to ask for more money. Kelly’s first question to Geithner’s people was whether they wanted Pandit out. Federal officials reportedly concluded that the number of candidates willing and able to replace him was now next to zero. Instead, federal officials encouraged Citi to start off-loading more properties and consider breaking up the company—even as the separate pieces were clearly worth less than they had been a year ago. The following Monday, Citi announced that it was receiving another bailout, this time $20 billion. (A month and a half later, Citi would merge Smith Barney with Morgan Stanley, giving Morgan a majority stake.) Meanwhile, colleagues told Pandit he had a problem with morale at Citi, but he insisted his problems were bigger than that. “Pandit said, ‘I can give all the internal motivational speeches to the troops; it won’t matter if I don’t deliver,’ ” recounts the friend. “Rightly or wrongly, he was very dismissive of his traditional leader role, the ‘Hey, you’re a statesman’ role. The problem is much more serious, and fixing the problem will change everybody’s mind both inside and outside.” How had Citigroup come to this? Blame began to circulate, with Rubin targeted as the alleged architect of the company’s high-risk investments. Before the spotlight could find him, Pandit, under pressure to defend Citigroup and give investors confidence that he was running the company, finally agreed to come out of hiding and appear on Charlie Rose. The performance was a slightly uncomfortable tap dance. The message: No one could have predicted this, no one is to blame, and there would be no further need for government bailouts. “We moved really fast,” Pandit told Rose. “What this market tells you is one should have moved even faster. And I keep thinking about it, is there something else I could have done sooner than what I did … But the most important thing, Charlie, is that it’s very, very important to look forward from where we are … We need to do a lot of hard work to figure out how to get from here to there.” “And you are confident that we can get there?” asked Rose. Pandit tried on his best inspirational-leader voice: “We, as a country, have no choice. We, at Citi, will get there.” Last week, Citi was back before the government with its hat in its hands. After $45 billion in federal aid, the company was desperate for more. The negotiations went on for over a week—although the word negotiation might be overstating it. “You don’t negotiate with the government,” says a Citi executive involved in the talks. “It’s not like there’s a give and take.” In
the end, the Treasury Department agreed to convert up to $25 billion in
preferred shares to common stock, shoring up Citi’s capital base. The
deal is expected to give the government up to a 40 percent stake in the
company—and influence within the board of directors. Pandit’s position,
according to an internal memo to Citi staffers, is that this is “not a
nationalization by any definition.” But while the Citi deal may not be
nationalization in the strictest sense, it is a stunning turn of events
for the U.S. government to own nearly half of one of the world’s
largest banks. What that means in terms of the operations of Citi is
anyone’s guess at this point. Federal officials seem reluctant to issue
directives to Pandit, hoping to avoid the appearance of a true
government takeover of the company. On the other hand, the consensus
among Citi’s newest shareholders is that the “supermarket” model is
untenable and the company needs to be broken up into smaller, more
manageable entities. It’s a move Pandit has resisted from the
beginning. Does he have time to turn things around? But Pandit isn’t calling the shots anymore. The Wall Street Journal, which has been particularly harsh in its depiction of the CEO, had him literally begging the government for his job last week: “Don’t give up on us,” he reportedly pleaded. “Give us a chance to execute.” “He’s playing defense all the time,” says a longtime friend from his Morgan Stanley days. “This is just grinding these people down to nothing.” Another friend calls him “tragic,” a government “charity case.” Says another, “Would I have advised him to take the job? Yeah. Would I feel bad in retrospect? Yeah.” Pandit has very little time to use whatever power he has left to try to turn things around at Citi—news of the Treasury deal sent the stock plunging to a historic low. A friend jokes that the CEO is the “MacGyver of the private sector banking system,” out to “save Citi before the timing device runs to zero.” But Pandit has never seen himself as the hero type. He looks at the problem with the eyes of an engineer: “My job is to figure out which pipes go where and which pipes have to be cut off, which pipes have to be unclogged,” he told a close associate. “It’s going to take me a year and a half to two years and then the water will flow, and when the water will flow, the stock price goes up. The stock price goes up, everybody will come around.” The night before the government deal is sealed, Pandit finally comes to the phone, after weeks of resisting an interview, to put rumors of his demise to rest. He seems amused, slightly giddy. He has survived, for now. He brushes off Journal reports that depicted him as powerless, running Citi under the heel of his “federal masters.” “We all have a master,” he says. “It’s not about that … It’s a tough time. There is adversity out there. If I don’t step up and do what I’m doing, take what is thrown at me and get this company going, I would have been the wrong choice of CEO.” In
conversation, he comes across as assertive, even a little cocky—bold in
a way his critics don’t believe he can be. “I have complete confidence
in my plan,” he says. “That’s what gets me here every morning.” Then
again, what choice does he have? February 26 2nd Anniversary, Rainbow hmm...挺有意思的一天. 窗外雨后的夕阳, 让我又走神了.  昨天是彩虹日, 从Office望出去, 仔细看有两道彩虹. 请忽略那脏兮兮的玻璃...  February 15 白の恋人北海道 动荡的08本命年 游荡了很多地方 世界之精彩 用镜头感叹 09年经济放缓 旅行的脚步也放慢下来 取消了柬埔寨之行 假期安排完全放空 去年年末的北海道+东京的日本之行 疲惫多过激情 总是怀念飘雪的季节 真正来到了北海道 包裹在一片白色的雪颜中 又开始怀念夏日的暖阳... 撇开我那份郁闷的思乡情不谈 圣诞日里的北海道还是到处充满浓郁的生活气息的 雪景 温泉 海鲜美食 天寒地冻下温馨无比 刺激的夜间雪道 300大刀的螃蟹 浪漫的童话般精致的小樽小镇 冻死人的冰雪世界 来看一下300刀的螃蟹的腿   白色的世界    洞爷湖边景     清晨的洞爷湖景    骑着摩托上山看雪  我撞雪堆里了  眼迷离...  看这雪下的...  唯一一张滑雪留影 (出自iPhone). 在我武装不足快被冻僵的时候, 我的450D在暖气房里睡觉呢  小樽运河边   飘雪的小镇 音乐处处回绕  音乐房子  一览无遗  札幌的大通公园上灯  December 26 天寒地冻里的一杯牛奶圣诞夜的北海道没有雪，于是我们深更半夜走去地狱谷祈雪，果然昨夜冷空气从日本海吹来，清早起来就是白茫茫的一片了。去昭和新山的一路上，感叹不已北海道的冬景果然没有令人失望！温泉酒店的房间临洞爷湖，据说是北海道唯二之一天寒地冻下不会结冰的湖泊，湖面广阔，大雪之下雾气迷蒙，湖中群岛若隐若现。 现在窗外鹅毛大雪铺天盖地，捧上一杯热牛奶，寒冬里取暖。iPhone写博也很方便...有些不知好歹，竟然想家想工作了... December 22 2008岁末的怨女团聚会,七年!虽然不是经常见面 在这孤单的小岛上有这样一群女孩子 七年的友谊 很温馨 很感动 我们就这样每年聚上两次 毕业了 工作了 恋爱了 结婚了... 八卦着每个小甜蜜 祝福着每段幸福 Love u girls~~ qiqi, 小孩, xinxin, cuicui, 雅星, 红红, lvxin, lina Merry X'mas & Happy New Year!  December 18 "久时候"的农田生活 跑上高原, 享受了十足的农田生活. 这次的出游度假性质多过旅游. 两天懒散悠哉的"弯弯"生活, 吃/喝/厕/走/睡, 外加咔嚓咔嚓. 爱死了我的新宝贝, 阴天下光线不够可是成色还是很饱满.  卷毛红, 哈哈~~  红透了的晶  大眼春春  臭美  某茶园  某某花  某猪手  音符般线条的植物  某植物特写  落英缤纷的后花园  Mossy Forest...这里有"猴子"出没  注意看, 这是魔术! Mossy变露水~
我爱草莓~  红毛, "久时候"和大眼春  啊, 美丽的茶园  金毛狮王登顶! 超级喜欢这张的颜色.  铁杆驴友在山顶哆嗦着...真得很冷, 可怜穿了全是洞的毛毛衣的"久时候"啊...  香浓的草莓奶茶, 泛着草莓色  "久时候"跷跷板  超酷广告片  最后亮相我的宝贝   November 30 超级无敌音乐小粉熊...爱死她了!!!自从换了Macbook用了Firefox之后一直琢磨着怎么在斯贝思上加音乐 之前的POWERTOY好像都不好使了 只能感叹苹果和微软的东西实在没有兼容可言 于是讨巧地嵌了一段YOUTUBE的音乐作为BLOG ENTRY (就是之前一登博客就自动播放的Auld Lang Syne) 现在那段ENTRY被挤下主页 音乐也没了 GOOGLE了半天也没个头绪 只得深更半夜把晶拖起来请教如何加音乐 终于加上了这只超级无敌可爱还会摇头晃脑的音乐小熊 给她改头换面的换上了粉装 - 音乐小粉熊! 太可爱了 而且可以随意加PLAYLIST 也没有兼容问题 (因为是FLASH嵌入)!!! 孟买的清扫终于结束了 整整三天 DEATH TOLL上到195人 昨晚去看了BODY OF LIES - 一部反恐片 - 在恐怖活动进行中的时候去看... 持续地跟踪印度时报的及时报道 文字和画面都让我有些恐惧后遗症... 最可笑的一段报道是: According to a Mumbai crime branch official, the ten terrorists had not come to Mumbai before this to conduct any 'recce' and they had learnt about the locations with the help of Google Earth... 鬼知道Taj Hotel一千多房间的复杂地形 连后来进行逐间清扫的Commando们都摸不清头脑...除非Google Earth有透视功能... 好啦 加了首What a wonderful world I think to myself....oh what a wonderful world November 28 今天是感恩节 经济危机 恐怖袭击 世界啊 What a mess... 昨天还在关注泰国局势会不会再次发生政变, 今天孟买的恐怖事件完全盖过了泰国那里力量党民盟的窝里斗... 从小打小闹的放置炸弹 到现在公然封锁高级酒店以AK-47火力和警方正面交火 更是有计划地设局把曾经屡立战功的反恐特种兵司令KNOCK DOWN... 新闻看得我毛骨悚然... 复杂的民族宗教问题 要用如此血淋淋的方式公然叫嚣... DIWALI刚过一个月 可怜已经放缓的印度经济和卢比雪上加霜... 我们不过感恩节 火鸡也不好吃 今年收成也不好 希望世界和平 November 26 这是怎样的世界阿从上周三开始心脏就没有平稳跳动过 先是股价, 接着整个周末盘算着我的PLAN B, 边寄希望于奇迹出现, 边小算盘打着我那点小银子够打包游荡到哪里混多久... 好吧, 奇迹果然出现...这是题外话, 研究一下FDIC/FED/TREASURY做的那些DEAL, 从FANNIE/FREDDIE到AIG到WAMU到半路夭折的WACHOVIA, 这个DEAL真得是WELL DESIGN的, 政府BAILOUT, LOSS SHARING, SHAREHOLDER也没有被WIPED OUT...在WHITE DOMINATED的华尔街, 能跟政府谈下这样的DEAL, 潘伟迪还是有能耐的...细节不谈, 回到正题... 这边局势稳定了, 老板下令明天打包去曼谷出差, 好吧...可是最近好像又是泰国的PAD发动反政府抗议示威...回家仔细查查新闻, 这下好了, 26日晚的飞机, CNN报26日0时22分由于大规模示威活动泰国关闭曼谷国际机场 (应该是Somchai在26日从秘鲁APEC返泰), 最近曼谷还断断续续发生街头榴弹爆炸流血事件... @#$@#$%@$$ ... 这种局面可是事关小命一条的大事... 看明早起来局势如何再做计划. 都是什么事儿哪~~现在深刻体会和谐社会多么重要 |
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