Citigroup directors removal sought by NY Post, WSJ
NEW YORK, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Two of New York's four major daily newspapers slammed the board of Citigroup Inc (C.N) on Tuesday, with a New York Post editorial calling for all of the directors to be removed and the Wall Street Journal saying most of them did not deserve to remain.
The day after the government stepped in to rescue the New York-based bank with an injection of $20 billion and a plan to shoulder most of the potential losses on $306 billion of toxic assets, the New York Post said that "they need to go."
It described the board as "grossly negligent" and said the directors "snoozed through the company's massive build-up of bad debt and rancid security instruments."
The Wall Street Journal, which like the Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp NWSa.N, said on its editorial page: "'Citi never sleeps,' says the bank's advertising slogan. But its directors apparently do."
The Journal named Chairman Sir Win Bischoff, who has held senior positions at Citi since 2000, and seven fellow directors, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, John Deutsch, Richard Parsons, Franklin Thomas, Michael Armstrong, Alain Belda, and Kenneth Derr, who have all served for more than 9 years.
It asked: "When taxpayers are being asked to provide the equivalent of $1,000 each in guarantees on Citi's dubious investments, how can these men possibly deserve to remain on the board?"
"If taxpayers have to risk so much to save Citigroup, then regulators should at least exert the discipline to break up this behemoth so it is never again too big to succeed, much less fail," the Journal concluded.
In a brief statement in response, Citigroup said its board "has diligently carried out its responsibilities during one of the most severe market downturns in decades."
The tabloid Post published photos of current board members as well as former director Rubin under the headlines: "Bozo bankers" and "Off with their heads".
"Some of them are already gone," the Post said. "If those who remain had any sense of decency, they'd simply quit." (Reporting by Jonathan Spicer)
