This is a bit dated news. I could not post it when it happened as I was too busy then.
Do Indians have enough fire in their bellies to become top executives at Fortune 500 companies? Indra Nooyi, was the first Indian born woman to become the CEO of this elite group of companies. On Dec 10, 2007 Vikram Pundit was officially named the CEO of the prestigious Fortune 500 company, Citigroup. Who was Vikram's competition for this top job? Included among the many names floated were Former (Clinton's) Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin. Enough said about how big an accomplishment for Vikram himself. The most important element in this appointment is that the perception of Indians in business circles changes for the better.
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Profile of Vikram Pandit from Wikipedia.
Pandit worked for Morgan Stanley for two decades and was the President and Chief Operating Officer of the Institutional Securities and Investment Banking Group at Morgan Stanley where he was responsible for the overall management of the group and focused on the trading, sales and infrastructure aspects of the business (2000-2005). Before that, he served as the managing director and head of the Worldwide Institutional Equities Division (1994-2000), and as the managing director and head of the US Equity Syndicate (1990-1994) for Morgan Stanley. Pandit left Morgan Stanley with a few colleagues to start a hedge fund Old Lane Partners, which Citigroup bought in 2007 for $800 million.
Pandit serves on the boards of Columbia University, Columbia Business School, the Indian School of Business and The Trinity School. He is a former board member of NASDAQ (2000-2003), the New York City Investment Fund.
On December 11, 2007, Pandit was named the new CEO of Citigroup, replacing interim-CEO Sir Winfried Bischoff. Pandit is the effective successor to Chuck Prince who resigned in November 2007 due to unexpectedly poor 3rd quarter performance, mainly due to CDO and MBS related losses.
Early Life and Education
The 50-year-old Pandit was born in Nagpur, Maharashtra, India to a moderately affluent Karhade Brahmin[2] family. Pandit did his schooling from the Dadar Parsee Youths Assembly High School, situated in Dadar, Mumbai. At the age of 16, he moved to the United States to attend college at Columbia University. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering in 1976 and 1977 respectively, and later earned a Ph.D. in Finance in 1986.[3]
He is a trustee at Columbia University. He was a junior finance professor at Indiana University Bloomington in the mid-1980s before joining Morgan Stanley. As head of Morgan Stanley's institutional-securities division from 1994 to 2000, he pushed the company into more electronic trading and helped build the firm's prime brokerage services that cater to hedge funds. He led the institutional-securities business from 2000 until March 2005.
Pandit and his wife Swati reside at Central Park West and 81st Street. The apartment was purchased from the late actor Tony Randall for $17.85 million in September 2007. The 10-room apartment has 20 windows facing Central Park.
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