Citi's Top Banker in Miami Has Become a Coveted CEO Prospect
Citi's Top Banker in Miami Has Become a Coveted CEO Prospect
"She's a driver of change," said AS/COA President and CEO Susan Segal about COA board member Jane Fraser.
Jane Fraser is not exactly a big name on Wall Street. Based in Miami, she runs Citigroup Inc.'s operations across Latin America, a region that generates less than 15% of the bank's revenue.
And yet, after chief executive officers stepped down at two of the world’s biggest banks in recent months -- first, at Wells Fargo & Co. in March and then HSBC Holdings Plc last month -- her name has consistently popped up among potential candidates to run both companies. That talk adds to long-held speculation in some corners of Citigroup that Fraser, an executive with a rare combination of experience in strategy as well as consumer and international banking, is a potential successor to CEO Mike Corbat...
In 2016, she unveiled a new name for the firm’s retail banking operations in Mexico -- Citibanamex -- finally giving it a logo that incorporated Citigroup’s brand. It had been 15 years since Citigroup had acquired Banamex, but it was Fraser who finally coaxed its workforce to see it as an extension of the U.S. bank.
She has managed to grow revenue from the region almost 8% since taking over, even while shedding consumer businesses in Brazil, Argentina and Colombia as part of the bank’s focus on paring less profitable units.
"She went into situations that were not what she was doing before and she grasped it, she got it and she drove it," said Susan Segal, who leads the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, where Fraser is a board member. "She’s a driver of change."
