Vikram Pandit, the former chief executive of Citi, who was reportedly ousted for damaging company relations with regulators and eroding investor confidence, is shopping his services around as, you guessed it, a Mr Fix-it for large corporations trying to improve corporate culture amid regulatory and legal problems.
Pandit’s new firm, named TGG, has a novel approach to problem-solving, promoting the use of insights into human behaviour and economics, and using ‘big data’ to help companies monitor employee behaviour, management decision-making, business models and strategy. It wants to help them with problems in the areas of fraud, corruption, culture and reputation.
This is the latest in a steady stream of comebacks for Pandit. Already, since leaving Citi he has launched a peer-to-peer lending business called Orchard Capital, attempted to create a bank consortium to buy stock exchange data and technology assets, and bought a stake in a bank in India. Among the partners in his new consulting firm are Steven Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics, and Daniel Kahneman, the winner of the Nobel prize for economics. At least Pandit can tell a few cautionary tales of his experiences steering Citi through a series of run-ins with regulators during his tenure, including having to apologize to Congress for considering buying a private jet just after accepting $45 billion in bailout funds from the US government.