Megafirm puts investment banker in charge of Global Wealth Management unit. Citigroup has moved to forge closer ties between units of the company that provide financial services to private clients on one hand and institutions such as corporations, financial institutions and governments on the other.

To that end, Citi has put former investment- and commercial-banking head Mike Corbat in  |image1| charge of its Global Wealth Management (GWM) division. He replaces Sallie Krawcheck.

At the same time, former Carlyle Group executive Ned Kelly has been tapped as Corbat's replacement as head of the investment- and commercial-banking lines of its Institutional Clients Group -- approximately Corbat's successor, in other words.

Investment bankers

"These extremely dedicated, experienced and talented executiveswill make Citi a more collaborative enterprise, further enhancing the company's ability to achieve our growth objectives and excel at meeting the needs of individual and commercial clients the world over," says Citi's CEO Vikram Pandit.

Corbat has been with Citi for 25 years. Kelly joined Citi from Carlyle, a Washington, D.C.-based investment company, in May 2008, initially to lead its alternative-investment group .

Krawcheck replaced Todd Thomson as chairman and CEO of Citi GWM early in 2007. She joined the company from Sanford Bernstein in 2002, first as head of Smith Barney, Citi's retail brokerage, and then, for about two years, as the Citi's CFO.

According to Wall Street buzz, Krawcheck was being groomed as an eventual CEO of Citi -- or was when Charles Prince was boss.

Pandit replaced Prince last December after Citi, long wracked by overspending, suffered a $13-billion writedown on bad mortgage-backed securities and received a $7.5 billion infusion from Abu Dhabi's so-called sovereign wealth fund to prop up capital reserves that had got low enough put a dent in its ability to make loans.

Pandit joined Citi in May 2007, when the company bought his hedge fund Old Lane. By October 2007 he was running Citi's investment-banking business. Before founding his own investment-management firm, he was COO of Morgan Stanley's investment-banking unit.

Krawcheck is supposed to stick around until the end of the year as chairman of Citi GWM before leaving "to pursue other opportunities," according to a company press release.

Citi GWM consists of Smith Barney, Citi Private Bank and Citi Investment Research. -FWR

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