Citi CEO: Restructuring, leadership, and empathy
2024-01-17 00:45:06
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Hi everybody and welcome to the podcast In good company. I'm Nicolai Tangen and I'm the CEO of the Norwegian Summer Wealth Fund. Today, I'm going to speak to Jane Fraser, the CEO of Citigroup. Jane is one of the most powerful women in global finance, and she was the first CEO of a very big American bank. We own almost 1 of Citi, equivalent to 6 billion Norwegian kroner, or 600 million dollars.
Now a lot of stuff going on in Citi, big restructuring and really interesting developments. Tune in.
So I'm here in New York with Jane Fraser, one of the most influential women in global finance, she is also the first woman who has led a major U.S. bank. And at Citi, she is doing a lot of changes which we're going to talk about. And few of you listeners know that. For a global fund like us, we also need a global custodian that's somebody who takes care of our shares, that's basically you.
So, first of all, thank you so much for looking after us.
Thank you for putting your trust in Citi.
Very good. Kick you off with a big picture. What does the world look like now for you?
It is a challenging place at the moment. I think we see a very desynchronized picture when you look at different parts of the world. I'm just back from being in Asia twice and the last month was in Middle East and over on the West Coast. And you really get a sense of different parts of the world are in very different places from a macro perspective. That said, I think the overriding theme for everyone at the moment is one of building resilience.
So from where we see the corporate sector, we see the corporate sector in pretty good health. Globally, balance sheets are pretty strong. They're looking at big transformations that they need to do because of all the digital world and the AI world, but they're also really re-examining business models. Supply chains, global lanes and flows are changing a lot. And how are they going to play differently in a world where we say that? There is now an additional S in ESG, and that is security?
And it's all those pieces. So that's very much on the corporate mind, commonly around the world, at the moment.
But when you look at the economy, what are the indicators you look at, particularly? What are the numbers you follow, if you could choose one or two numbers?
Well, right now it would be rates, just given that we've had the high inflation and heavy inflation everywhere. So looking at rates where they're being brought down. What's happening to the curve and what's happening with inflation is something we had not looked at in the developed world for a while. I used to work in an emerging market, so I'm more used to slightly different double digit numbers than the developed world.
What grade would you give the central banks for the work they've done in the last few years?
I think we would all say in retrospect, and it's very easy in retrospect, that they were late to the game. In recognizing how much inflation was going up, it's much easier in the business sector. We were seeing it on all fronts. When we spoke to our real estate clients. We were seeing it in terms of how much rental rents were going up, we were seeing it in supply chain costs.
We were seeing it in energy costs, we were seeing tightness in labor.
So you saw it everywhere, why didn't the central bank see it?
I think the data that they rely on is much more lagging, whereas we get a very real time feel to the information. And then there were other considerations, I think there was nervousness about coming out of Covid. Jobs were probably appropriately prioritized over inflation and making sure that the economy was stimulated so that people had jobs, more businesses could recover. And that was the dialogue.
In retrospect, in the states, we overstimulated what was a well-performing economy.
Do you think the central banks will change the type of data they look at?
I'm sure they will, I hope so, I'm sure they will be we all are. And once they got on Chien-pao, he acted very decisively once he saw what was needed.
But we certainly had a very steep, very rapid increase in the rates curve. And with that came some pain. And I think we're still going to feel that pain for a while. Because as companies and as individuals refinance, it's going to be at materially higher cost.
I asked Anna-Bettine whether we actually need the banks anymore? Do we need the banks anymore?
I should put the question back to you, last time I checked you needed me, not my bank.
Yeah, we need a part of you, we need a part of your bank, but do we need the whole bank?
Well, obviously, I am a strong believer and advocate in the role banks play, because if I compare it, there's been a big enchantment with DeFi. If you do not have a well-regulated system. And that's one that gives the right investor protections, the right regulatory frameworks to support innovation, to support responsible investment, and also consumer protections. I actually think you end up with a lose-lose. And we saw that in the crypto arena. None of those pieces were in place really anywhere around the world, and therefore we saw a lot of abuses of the system.
And as banks, when the going gets tough, I remember very well in March 2020, well before the Fed and the central banks and the treasuries around the world stepped in a good six weeks. If the banks had not been stepping in, making markets, supporting the clients. And in there, many of the asset managers would have been in serious, serious issue, as in life-threatening for some, and the companies wouldn't have had the support. Then. It was very necessary for the Fed and the Treasury to step in the central banks around the world, and I think they did an outstanding job when they did.
But there were six weeks when the markets are under stress. We're in there with a sense of with a responsibility around it. That if your mandate in private equity or in private credit, or where you don't necessarily have the capital base as a broker-dealer. To come in and support when there's stress. These are some of these roles that are easy to forget when the going is fine. But the roles that we play as responsible custodians of the financial system is critically important.
What is Citi's competitive advantage? Do you think? what are you particularly strong at?
Our competitive advantage is very simple we are the preeminent banking partner for any institution with cross-border needs. So we operate in 160 countries, we have banking licenses in almost 100, and we move every single day. $4 trillion in cash management, foreign exchange and through the supply chains for the world's 5,000 most important multinationals.
So, to put that in context, the largest of the fintech players today in a year are moving about a trillion dollars. in a year we move $1,400 trillion.
We're 1,400 times bigger, and the flows, the connectivity. It sits on a singular platform that provides risk management capabilities that provides incredible data efficiency capabilities. And we're able to provide the FX hedging, commodity hedging, interest rate hedging, cash management, payroll, supply chain compliance, et cetera for the biggest drivers of the global economy.
Absolutely, but being global, is that as important as in the past, given the globalization and the way the world fragments? Yeah.
I would argue globalization is changing, it's not deglobalizing, but it is changing, and we're seeing the lanes change materially. But that network I talked to you about grew 30 last year for us in revenues, 50 of that was rates.
But 50 of that, which is much faster than GDP and other elements, was just a straight volume growth going through the network. So what that's evidence of is people reconfiguring their supply chains, they're reconfiguring their financing capabilities, they're reconfiguring energy flows. The Middle East is becoming a much more important player, particularly linkages into Asia.
For them, Brazil's much more connected to Asia now than it is to its fellow Latin American compatriots. And so there's a lot of change happening, and also I think this knowledge has started of resiliency. You're having to add more capabilities, more redundancy, and less of the just-in-time, more of the just-in-case.
And that's making a more resilient globalization, which I also think is a good thing. We got pretty lazy and complacent around lowest cost, highest fossil fuel consuming locations, because it was much, much cheaper and heavily centralized. And I think we learned a bit too late that that's not the best model for the world.
Talking about competition, when you look at the most successful banks in the market, let's take, for instance, J.P. Morgan. What is the most important thing they this other bank? what is the most important thing they have done differently from you?
I think some of the firms coming out of the financial crisis were in a stronger position than Citi was, and they fully capitalized on it. I think we are making some of the investments that we probably underinvested in in the last 10 years very heavily right now. Particularly in making sure we have a very modern data and modern infrastructure in all parts of our business, so that we can support the scale and agility that is needed. And I think that's an area that we had underinvested in in the last few years and that we are intent on leapfrogging others.
So that brings us on to your restructuring.
Yes.
Which you have called the Bora Bora, which is actually a nice place, have you been?
I haven't been to Bora Bora, No, I haven't been to Bora, Bora, we call it. It's been called for a while now. Org simplification When it was first named, it was that because we're looking at how are we aligning our ORG structure with the strategy for the firm that we laid out? And one always needs code names at that point.
We've been calling it the Org simplification project for quite a long time.
Tell me about it, what is it going to do? But not. But I mean, in short.
Very simply, we have a couple of goals. Our ORG structure and management processes were fit for a universal bank. There was a universal bank everywhere, and that's not the bank we are today. So it's making sure we have an Org structure that is appropriate for the strategy we have. Which is a far fewer set of businesses that are all interconnected together, serving a singular client base, clients with cross-border needs.
That's a much simpler management structure than if you're running universal banks in 60 countries, which is what we have been.
How do you come up with a plan like that?
You start with the vision of the bank, you look at what the strategy is, and then you say, what is the ORG structure that fits with it? But the second bit of the Org simplification work is actually changing how we run the bank as well. And that's where we found. We don't need such heavy governance because we're not running lots of local businesses, they're global platforms, so they don't need the same heavy local management structures.
We've been getting eliminating co-heads. So instead of people being able to arbitrage between two bosses or get frustrated because they have two bosses that don't agree, we're just moving to singular bosses.
Like kids with two parents.
Very much so. I think we're all skilled at that one. My kids certainly are.
And giving more, flattening the organization, we had areas, we were 13 layers. We're going to bring that down to a median of eight and really get the organization.
So you had 13, so from the top to the bottom, 13..
In certain parts of the organization, 13.
And you're taking out what is it? Five?
So then you'll collapse it into five, and we started that at the very top. So we took out the layer directly below me, in terms of an aggregator layer of our different regions and an aggregation of our institutional and consumer business. And just took out that layer and then flattened the organization from the get-go. Because I do believe if you don't start at the top and you just compress the organization in the middle, it's not exactly leading from the front.
You talk about speed, but this is quite a drawn-out restructuring process, as I understand it.
Not really. I've been told that we're doing it at unusual speed. We're an organization of 240,000 people and we're doing this in about six months.
So when you are done, how many fewer people will you be in the bank?
We don't know yet, because what we're also working through will be a big transformation. We have a couple of big regulatory consent orders, which is, I think, appropriately focusing us on improving our risk control and our operational capabilities. So nicely aligned for our shareholders with what they want to see as well.
Your language has been, it seems, a bit crisper lately than before, right? If you are not with us, you can do something else, right, that kind of language.
I think it's better to be direct to people. We're looking at consequential change in the bank and how we run the bank. And when you go through these transformations, you need everyone to be focused on delivering to our clients and getting what we need executed. And I think you have to have, I've always believed that you have to have an honest and transparent conversation with your people and your organization. It's important that they believe in the direction we're going.
We play an incredibly important role in the global economy as the world's most global bank, and that network we talked about earlier. That comes with huge responsibilities. And if you're not on board with the direction we're taking the bank, then it is time to go and find another place.
That kind of crisp language is not very English, is it?
I'm Scottish.
Yeah, so you think that's different?
I've had to do quite a lot of transformation work and I find it is much more effective to stand up in front of your people. Tell them straight what needs to get done and what it's going to take, be clear about it and then help them do it.
Is it important for you to be liked?
It's not about being liked, it's about.
No, but is it important for you as a person to be liked?
Well, by my family, I would hope so. I don't believe in assholes, I don't think there is any need to be an asshole, but there is a big difference between being an asshole and being straight. With people being clear and then being supportive around them, listening, I think those are attributes that are important.
But I've never found that there is a trade-off between excellence and empathy. You can listen to people, you can understand their point of view, and you better be listening to people. In these jobs. These days, you take it into account and then you make your decisions.
Do you have a lot of empathy?
I hope so.
Is that one of your superpowers?
Well, I don't believe anyone has superpowers. I really hate that sort of over-exaggerated Instagram, whatever language, but I do think it's important to listen, I was told by one of our board members have big ears. And every year, your hearing has to improve. Because you'll be told less and less, or you will have less and less desire to listen. Because you get caught into, locked in and have unfixed skin, be resilient.
We are not going to talk much about gender here, but do you think women have more empathy than men?
I honestly don't know, I'm pausing on that one. As a mother, you have a lot, I'm a mother, I have a lot of empathy around different pieces.
I think in the business environment, we all bring different skills, that can be different styles. It's been easier for me, I think, as a woman in the role, to do things a little differently stylistically than it probably is for a man that I do believe.
Sorry, such as.
During Covid, it was much easier for me to connect in with the organization and our people. And they're going through a huge health crisis and set a different tone. We talked a lot about empathy, listening to our people, what did they need, how did we help support them so that they could then actually support our clients? We were much more flexible around work arrangements and other pieces. We saw some other peers take a much more strident tone. If you weren't in the office, you weren't working.
People are going through a health crisis. At that point they needed support around different areas. I felt now that the health crisis is over. I think we can have a model where you can have more flexibility in it. We showed that work.
You still need to have excellence.
Do you think showing empathy in that period has made people more loyal, or are you seeing any differences in behavior?
We certainly when we look at our VOE results, our voice of the employee results, which we go out. And we usually have about a 90 percentage response rate from our people. Globally, you get a very clear view and there's a lot of written feedback in it, not just the survey results. They were notably stronger than they were beforehand. I do describe our bank as a human bank. I think the soul of an organization sits in the people.
We are very blessed by being a global bank with some of the values and benefits of being American or being Western. When I look at myself, I deliberately sought out an American institutions to work for. I've only ever worked for a Spanish one, but otherwise, I've only ever worked for Americans. I thought there would be more meritocracy in it. A lot of our people in the emerging markets, they come, and like the global mindset of a global institution.
I think they've all seen a lot of challenging times in the developing world. It's a lot tougher growing up in the emerging market than it has been in the developed world for our generations. I think there is more of a desire, a love. We talk about the love of progress within Citi, and how do you support that progress? We tapped into that during Covid.
I think people realized how our clients also realized they really liked a lot of the Citi teams around the world. We felt that we were really caring about them. Our people cared about the country, about the community. I'm sure many other institutions found the same, but it was notable and I get it a lot from our clients.
They like the fact that Citi doesn't have an arrogance, but has a humanity about it that shines through. We're unfortunately watching it shine through in Middle East at the moment, and Israel. We're seeing it in Ukraine and Russia, where we've been present and different hotspots. It's important.
How do you view AI and banking?
I view it as full of opportunity, but also some real threats. On balance, the opportunities outweigh the threats. But you better be looking at both in the use cases that we're developing.
What kind of threats are you particularly concerned about?
I look at cyber fraud, bad actors in particular, I think it's heavily the cyber and the fraud space that I worry about. Then I also just worry about social media and the political social dissonance that is happening at the moment. Getting fueled by it as well, because that's also not great for the world and geopolitical stability. The opportunity is where it can amplify the work that humans do, a lot of the capabilities that the co-pilots and the like. That can help you be more creative.
There was Jenny Johnson at Franklin Templeton, I was on a panel with her the other day, she said. Her head of tech described AI today a bit like an intern. That you want them to be the one that's giving you all the information, but perhaps not the ones making the decisions. I thought that was quite a good description of it.
How do you use it personally?
I was using ChatgPt to work out based on the holidays that I've gone. Where are some of the vacation spots I should be looking at for next year? And seeing if they came up with some interesting ones I hadn't thought of?
What did it tell you?
I was delighted to see that Ethiopia was on the list, which I think will be interesting, and Mongolia, which are two places that are on my list that I want to go to. That I haven't been to yet. And some specific suggestions as well, but they said, maybe wait an additional year for Ethiopia, which is probably wise.
Probably is right.
Talking about countries far away, what are the geopolitical situations you are concerned about now?
Obviously it's the China-US relationship is the biggest one. I think we've been pleased to see the engagement improving. It was just at APEC last week and there was clearly both sides wanting this to be successful and for the dialogue to be constructive and productive. We're happy to see less of the decoupling language, and even the de-risk was changing into we were proposing, can we use the word diversify rather than de-risk?
Because I think that's a lot of what's going on in the world. There will be technology decoupling, for sure, we are seeing some decoupling, I think, in financial flows as well. But the world's economy is heavily interdependent, those two economies in particular. And it's relieving to see both pretty strong economic engagement between both. But also, probably most importantly, that the military engagement is going to get restarted.
If accidents happen all the time or people get carried away out at the front line, and that can very rapidly escalate. If you don't have the good channels of communication to calm things down, we've seen this everywhere around the world. I think one of the things that's been good with Russia and the U.S. is extremely close, constant communication. So when something goes unintentionally wrong, it can get de-escalated and addressed quickly. We need that with China.
Talking of some of those, so you're a Scots living in New York, when you look at Europe, what do you see?
I'm a bit sad, I worry that Europe is losing some competitiveness. It had a perfect storm hit it to my mind. In terms of both, what's happened with labor cost, what happened with energy costs, and therefore just the straight competitiveness of certain industries has got impacted. I also, having spent a bit of time in China, I'm just afraid and in awe. Simultaneously, or in respect of what they've achieved in so many industries, from the speed of technological adoption and advance, it's quite breathtaking.
And you just feel it's very, very hard for industrialized Europe to compete as effectively with the cost advantages, the technology and investment advantages that many Chinese companies have developed.
So what's the root cause for Europe being slower?
I think there's a number of parts of Europe that plays defense rather than offense. So let's look at a topic that's near and dear for both of us, which is climate change. I'm going to be crude and over-exaggerate, but the U.S. has had a variety of responses. We all know that, but one of the big ones has been legislation that has incented investment in sustainable technologies and in battery packs. The IRA package.
And it's a big package, it's the carrot in Europe. It feels as if the package that was put together was a bit more half-hearted. But there's much more of the protective dimensions and more of the stick that we feel in terms of. We want to have the metrics, the measurements, the different taxonomy, the different areas around it, and it's less of.
The Americans are very, very good over and over again at where is a new opportunity? And they just pile on and come up with the innovation around it. And it's something about the states. I try and put my hand on it because it fascinates me.
Yeah, but Europe doesn't normally lose out because they have less subsidies than America, so there must be something else.
No, because it's playing defense, Europe's playing defense as opposed to America's playing offense.
So what do you think this mindset thing is?
The mindset in America is a yes, you can, almost. For some people, they feel as if it's a right for them. You go and meet some of the people in real estate, go meet some of the folk, extraordinary, bold entrepreneurs.
And I remember meeting one gentleman, Wes Eaton, who is out at Fortress. And he's been in the financial markets all his life. And he just looked at the. There was a divergence in the curves in gas prices and oil prices and supply and various things. And he went, that's odd, studied a bit more and said, OK, I'm going to become an LNG player, and he did.
And has been incredibly successful in it. And there's a bit of this bold audacity in America, in the ideas that many of the entrepreneurs I have the pleasure of meeting in this job, in industry after industry. That they just have the yes we can, and they go for it. You don't have quite that same, you don't have the same volume of that in Europe.
And the flip side of that is some lack of social security.
Yes.
And how do you gauge that?
Yes, the health care system is very different here if you're not as wealthy than it is in Europe.
There are a lot of the different. The infrastructure, I would say in Europe, is often much better and preferable than the resiliency and amount of money put into infrastructure in the states. Hopefully that will get addressed in the future. So, yeah, there are a number of downsides and trade-offs to it.
But I always come back, do not bet against the American entrepreneur if it's shale, if it's health care. What's going on there in the energy space, in industry after industry? They're pretty remarkable, so now are the Chinese, and it's a very different model.
So you've had a very international background, and you also worked in Latin America, I believe, and you speak Spanish. Yes, you learned that.
I learned my Spanish on the trading floor in Spain. that is not the most ladylike of Spanish that I learned on the trading floor. But I never get ripped off by a cab driver in any of Latin America as a result.
What else did you learn in Latin America?
Actually, I learned the love of the rule of law. When you operate in countries where the rule of law is seriously undermined, you realize it is something to be defended.
And I think that's something as a former European, because I'm Scottish and here in the states. I think we do not understand how valuable that is in helping provide protection against abuses, corruption, providing clarity and security of decision making. Investment flows that have to have high risk premium to it, a whole range of things.
And yeah, that was the unexpected takeaway I had. The other piece that I loved about it was the different cultures. And just going back into an environment again where you had such diversity of culture and colors. Music and people is rather wonderful.
Absolutely so. When you look at the corporate culture you want to install in Citi, what does it look like?
It comes down to a few words that we use a lot, so we certainly use diverse, because that's what we are, we're from everywhere. We often say that the common language at Citi is bad English around the world, because it's almost everybody's second language in the firm. So there's a natural global mindset and diversity about the firm. Just given the footprint and where we operate and move our people around the world.
Excellence is part of the culture, I want to get in. When people talk about state of the art, best in class, you never know what that is. Everyone can understand what excellence is.
What does it mean? What does it mean?
You're delivering at an extremely high standard. If you've done an excellent job, you know that you've delivered outcomes, not just done a lot of hard work.
And those outcomes are usually in the eye of the recipient. So, is it in the eye of the client? is it in the eye of the shareholder? is it in the eye of the regulator or your peers and colleagues?
And where are you now on the excellence scale?
Where we are on the excellence scale, some of our businesses are excellent, some of them have work to do to get there in terms of their performance. We've got some areas with client experience where it is at the excellence level and other areas where it's not. So. I'd say we are getting there, but we're not there yet. I don't think you'll ever get there for an entire firm.
No.
But as something that people can strive for that, you set your performance management against, you set other people expecting that and able to challenge someone else to deliver it. I think that helps lift a sense of continuous improvement in an organization and a willingness not to accept the status quo. But to look at what can I do better?
How long does it take to change the corporate culture in an organization with 200,000 people?
It takes a while. We have some real strengths in our existing culture. But how long?
If you were to set a number, how many years do you think it is?
Most people tell me it's three to five, really, to change the elements of it.
To me, it sounds very optimistic.
It's not you have to change the whole culture, it's elements of the culture that need to get changed, and that's where the organization simplification helps. Because if you're trying to get excellence in, if it's very hard to deliver excellence, it's rather an unfair standard to expect of people. Whereas if you can, make it easier for them to do so.
Are you an excellent leader?
No, not yet.
I hope to be.
Why not, first of all, what is an excellent leader for you?
An excellent leader is someone who's got that proven track record as the CEO behind them and the experience behind it. It's a tough learning curve in the job, and there's a lot of things you can only learn in the job.
And I think it's someone who's pretty humble, who's got clarity of vision, but who's also has got a lot executed on their watch. As a leader and as a CEO, and we are through the journey, but we've still got a few years to go.
And so what specifically are you trying to improve with your own leadership?
And for myself, some of it is stakeholder management. That was one of the areas as a C.E.O surprised me how much time you have to put into stakeholder management. And then making sure that as we're working through all of the changes we're driving in the organization. That also requires you to be pretty hands-on, be very visible, you've got to be very present, and you've got to be understanding. You end up making the tough calls, they end up on your plate.
So you need to know that you have to make those calls and you've got to be informed enough to be able to make them correctly. Or you then make a different decision. Those are some of the things that I've been learning how to balance.
How does age change leadership for you?
How does age? I'm not sure, it's age, it's experience on different things. I remember my boss one time telling me. You'll have several different careers in your life and your career will be measured in decades. Just make sure you make the most of each decade or each phase of your career and learn from them. And so for me, as I've got older, it's been.
I've accumulated more experiences, and you know your own flaws better if you're honest with yourself.
Some of your flaws?
I can drive too hard.
Drive yourself too hard.
I can drive myself too hard and then that puts pressure on other people.
I often will look for too much focus on perfection, and I've learned the hard way, it's progress over perfection.
When you drive yourself too hard, what does it do to you?
It gives me a lot of energy, but if you take it to the extreme, you end up becoming transactional, and that's not good. Because as a leader, you have so many inputs coming in at you. If you don't, take the time to step back from it and really give yourself time to think and make sure other people are doing. And that you're the one that's sitting there, yep, driving in when you need to. But you've also got to be, I think today, a bit further away from everything going on, to really have a good perspective about what's happening. So that ability to step away is a vital one, and that needs to be every day, as well as on vacations or other times when you're away from the day-to-day. Talking to clients is another wonderful thing as you're learning from what everyone else is doing and seeing.
But Jane, if you're a perfectionist, how easy is it to step away?
Well, the job's undoable, so that does help.
You know, you very much end up. I worked out when I became a mother.
That's when I learned that you can no longer be the analyst. That gets all the work done, the deck's checked and everything's perfect, and that's never going to work anymore. And so I always like to be 120 prepared for everything, and when I became mum, that was impossible.
So you became less micromanaging after that.
Yeah, and of myself in terms of the amount, I learned 80-20 and I became a better professional as a result of it.
What does it take to get to the top of the financial industry?
Today, I think what it needs is a diversity of experience, so a lot of us have grown up in product silos or individual areas. Whereas I find that when you're running a bank and a global bank, the things you need to be adept at is not really the deal structuring, but it's much more around sometimes. Crisis management is an important part of it, being very savvy about people, understanding where risk-taking and risk prevention, and some of these can be operational. You know, I've had to deal with in my career the impact of earthquakes and hurricanes, shutting down countries, and pandemics and wars and other pieces. And it is very helpful when you have some playbooks and you've had those, you've had a breadth and depth of it, particularly a breadth of different experiences. So you can bring those to bear. When you're sitting at the top of the shop and it's on your watch. And it's down to you and your team, but at the end of the day, you're the one accountable for it. Having a breadth of experience across the gamut of macro environments and geopolitical situations, and others becomes very important.
And talking about those playbooks, what's the most formative experience you've had?
The world Financial crisis. I was in charge of strategy at Citi at that point and M&A, which for a woman who likes shopping, I just sold things. And. But I learned a lot of courage at that point that I saw that. You have to be bold, you have to have courage when you're looking at transforming things, and you have to be very disciplined about staying focused. Citi had become a bit of a financial supermarket in the 90s and the beginning of the 2000s. And we had to get rid of all of that and refocus on being a bank. Same for me again. Now we're focused on where our strengths are and what we can do for our clients, and not pretending we can be all things to all people.
How did you deal with stress during the financial crisis and now during stressful periods?
I was younger, so I needed less sleep these days, making sure that I have resilience so that I eat well. I try and make sure I get enough sleep.
I make sure I have time for my family as well. I've got a great family. I probably want to spend more time with my sons than they want to spend with me. They're in their early 20s.
That's a good sign, I think.
That's a good sign.
And you've got good emotional, physical and spiritual resilience. How much do you sleep? I try and get seven hours every night. Jet lag's not wonderful, and as I get older, I discovered that it is harder to recover from jet lag than it used to be.
Do you meditate?
What I do is I practice good breathing techniques. I had a coach a while ago that taught me how to breathe properly and that's actually made a huge difference. It, in a way, is a form of meditation because it gets you connected in, it, gets your body in a better, more relaxed shape to take things. So I actually find that very helpful.
And what's the key to good breathing?
It is sitting properly, not like I am today, with the feet on, not with the legs crossed and the like, with your feet on the ground. That you're sitting up straight and you feel that there's a sort of alignment in your body, down through your core, and then you just breathe out, not up in your chest, but down almost in the belly.
Because if you're breathing up here, that's usually you're holding your body quite tense. Whereas down here is where in your core is where a lot of your strength and energy comes from, and it's good for the body. I've read a couple of books around it and concurred Rather than meditation, I find that's what works well for me.
How do you relax?
Oh, I love traveling, I love going to new cultures and not so much cities, but geographies. With stunning views and going for a walk or getting out into the countryside, that, for me, is heaven.
And what do you read?
I mean, work is so much reading. We've got a wonderful research group called GPS that comes up with such interesting, different things that I don't read as part of the day job. Although it does tangentially, because they'll be looking at, say, racial equity or biodiversity A.I. different areas. I find really interesting, so I enjoy that sort of reading.
And I miss when I'm traveling.
Reading either The Washington Post or The New York Times or The Sunday Times, the Sunday newspapers are always a great source of joy. Some toast.
Or the Scotsman, or whatever it's called.
Yeah, that's not quite as strong as it used to be, but yes, it was indeed the Scotsman.
Now we have tens of thousands of young people listening into this. What is your advice to young people?
This is a difficult time for you, so give yourself a bit of a break. I think sometimes the pressures on young folk, from social media, from society, from universities and high schools, and things now is much more demanding. So I go back to you can have it all, but you're not going to have it all at the same time, and your life is in decades.
So enjoy every phase of your life through those decades. Some will be more successful than others, That's fine. Some of them will be much more focused on other people than on you or other things.
But just enjoy each phase and make the most of it and don't be in such a hurry.
Well, Gianna, I hope you will enjoy this phase. all the best of luck and hope for great success with Citi. Good luck.
Thank you, very much, thank you.
Thank you.
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