Business

New Citi CEO has rep for cleaning up bank’s messes

Call him “The Cleaner.”

New Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat isn’t well known outside of banking circles, but he has plenty of experience wiping up Citi’s messes.

Corbat has spent his entire working career at the bank, moving up from bond trader at Salomon Brothers, a Citi legacy firm, to the head of Citi’s Wealth Management Unit after Sallie Krawcheck was ousted in 2008.

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Most recently, the 52-year-old Corbat oversaw Citi’s Europe, Middle East, Africa units as the troubled bank shifted its focus to international operations outside of North America.

Before that Corbat was tapped to head Citi Holdings, the “bad bank” division that held the bank’s toxic assets in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Corbat was put in charge of disposing of those assets and was instrumental in the spin-off of non-core assets, including life insurance firm Primerica in 2009.

His name was recently floated as a potential candidate to take over at Bank of America, another big bank that has had its share of stumbles, if current CEO Brian Moynihan were to leave.

Corbat is well respected inside and outside of Citi’s ranks and is an established name in the banking world. Indeed, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon considers Corbat a strong executive, said one person familiar with Dimon’s thinking.

He’s a pretty “level-headed guy” said another Wall Street official, who has worked with Corbat in the past.

This isn’t to say that Corbat hasn’t gotten a little dirt on himself. He has a minor blemish from early in his career.

In 1995, Corbat, then a managing director at Salomon Brothers, was among three brokerage executives who were banned from doing business with the now defunct Resolution Trust Corp., which was established in 1989 to liquidate assets following the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.

That year, Resolution Trust banned Corbat and one of his Salomon colleagues from “doing business with the agency” amid concerns of lavish gift giving a few years prior, according to a published reported at the time.

An investigation by the agency’s inspector general into gift giving by brokerage firms found “no evidence to draw a connection between the gifts and entertainment extended by the firms and the award of any particular contracts,” according to one report.

Still, the agency banned Corbat and two others.

The agency found Corbat had spent $1,456.17 one day in 1992 “for a day of hunting, shooting and lunch at Sandonona in Millbrook, NY,” with two Resolution Trust employees and a Salomon colleague to discuss “asset sales,” the agency’s ethics office said at the time.

This was in addition to his wining and dining of agency officials at restaurants in New York and Washington, DC, according to the agency.

Corbat was an athletic standout at Harvard.

As an offensive guard for his college football team, Corbat’s name was floated as a possible pick for the NFL, according to a 1982 article in the Harvard Crimson.

The scouts were after him, and while he was interested, he said it was clear he wasn’t a top pick. As a result, Corbat told the paper he was probably headed elsewhere after graduation.

“I’m just not psyched to be somebody’s piece of meat,” the 6-foot 3-inch, 230 pound guard told the paper at the time, adding that his goal for the following year was to be in investment banking.

After graduating in 1983, Corbat joined Salomon Brothers, which was taken over by Citi in 1998.

kwhitehouse@nypost.com