New Citigroup CEO Corbat chose business over NFL

Long before he was named Citigroup's CEO Tuesday, Michael Corbat was an NFL prospect at Harvard.

The school's newspaper reported in the fall of 1982 that a half-dozen National Football League teams were giving Corbat a good look. All the 6-foot-3, 230-pound Corbat would have to do is gain 20-plus pounds.

But the all-Ivy offensive guard wanted to go into business instead.

"Right now, playing in the NFL would only be the icing on the cake," he told The Harvard Crimson. If he wanted to play professional football, he would've played in college at a big-time football program.

Instead, he turned to his other passion: business. He took a job as an investment banker at Salomon Bros. after graduating from Harvard in 1983 with a degree in economics. MCI Enterprises, a profitable business he started at Harvard, was good training.

The company did clean-up work: painting, landscaping, light construction.

He said bidding the lowest would land him sizable contracts. "Most of these aren't small jobs," he told the paper. A number required him to hire eight to 10 people for a job.

"Students always need jobs, so there's a broad labor base. There wasn't anything to lose," he said.

Corbat, a longtime executive best known for cutting toxic assets, was named CEO Tuesday after former CEO Vikram Pandit abruptly stepped down.

Corbat has risen in the ranks quickly in his career. Corbat was a managing director of three different parts of Salomon Bros.: emerging markets, high yield and derivatives.

Salomon merged with Citi, then named Citicorp, in 1998. The two became Citigroup subsequent to the merger. Salomon, renamed Salomon Smith Barney after the merger, was abandoned by Citigroup in late 2003 after a series of financial scandals that tarnished the bank's reputation.

Early on in his tenure at Citi Corbat served in several high-profile positions, including as head of global emerging market debt.

He later became the CEO of three different Citigroup operations, first Citi's Global Wealth Management unit, then later Citi Holdings, where in 2011, he oversaw the bank's divestment from more than 40 businesses, including the initial public offering and sale of Citi's remaining stake in Primerica.

He was in charge of Citi's decision to retain its portfolio of retail credit cards, a boost to the credit card industry. Citi's portfolio of credit cards includes partnerships with Sears, Home Depot and Zale.

In January of this year he was named Citi's CEO of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In that role, he oversaw all of Citi's business operations in the region, including consumer banking, corporate and investment banking, securities and trading and private banking services.

In an internal memo sent Tuesday morning Corbat told Citi employees he would make "changes" after digging through the company's books and evaluating its structure.

He told company employees he is "both humbled by the confidence the board has placed in me, and excited by the prospect of working closely with our management team and the board to take our company forward."

Thirty years ago, Harvard's paper reported that as a college student Corbat was reluctant to talk about himself for any long period of time. He brushed aside his many accomplishments as a football player, the paper reported. He even seemed embarrassed to expound on being recognized by NFL scouts.

There were enough to count "on the gridiron," the reporter of the piece wrote at the time.

The paper reported he was adored by women on campus and gave out free tickets to Harvard's games to dining-hall staff.

Corbat told the paper the team had good chemistry. Harvard lost out on the Ivy title that year, but scouts still gave the undersize lineman a good look.

"This year everybody on the team is a leader," he told the Crimson.

His mother told the paper that "he was always outgoing and good natured as a child."

The November 1982 article was entitled "He's All-Ivy and a Perfect Team Player."

Corbat's mix of warmth and strength appears to have served him well. Citi is the nation's third-largest bank in terms of assets, according to the Federal Reserve.

He told the Crimson that hard work was the key to his success.

He said there wasn't "much glory" to it, but "you can't help a team without being self-motivated."

USA Today