I’ve watched, over decades, hundreds of #bank #restructurings, #strategy #revamps & #updates come & go. In recent days alone, we’ve had #Citi, #SG, #Santander. Re-orgs & strategy shifts tend to be very similar regardless of the business model/geography of the bank in question. Open question: has any of them has made a real, durable difference? (I mean really.) Despite the way they’re richly articulated, re-orgs/revamps tend to be less attempts at building Banking Utopia 3.0; more tickets to buy time to fix problems. Problems we're told were caused by the previous management structure or strategy. (They rarely are). When I heard Citi boss Jane Fraser say that the org changes the bank had announced were the most consequential to how it will be organised & run in almost 20 years, I had a déjà vu moment. Not because of Fraser herself; she's clearly highly accomplished but because here was another narrative right out of the consultant’s playbook. So we heard about simplifying, streamlining, flattening, aligning, cutting redundancy/overlap, driving accountability, benefiting from linkages & strengthening client delivery in order to unlock value potential to deliver better returns to shareholders. Heard that before? Citi’s issue is its share price. And now that the CEO’s comp package has been much more closely aligned with the interests of shareholders (incentives are tightly lashed to the mast of the share price) it’s an issue doubly owned by the CEO. Of course there's always a Plan B. If the re-org doesn't work, restructure again ... Banks & the dark arts of eternal restructuring: https://lnkd.in/e9uuzM7B The Asset
During that brief interlude writing the L'Eminence Noir column, I heard many very senior bankers bemoaning their CEOs reaching for McKinsey et al. "Make us look like Goldman Sachs" was the brief back then. It was kind of pathetic seeing senior management pretending to seek value for (wholly supine) shareholders that by coincidence made them (the senior managers) very rich indeed. Dunno what the answer is, but you won't find it from a consultant.