Edward Ruff — a managing director whom Citi placed on leave in January while it investigated allegations that he intimidated one co-worker and shouted insults at members of his team because they were late to a call — has left the bank, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg on Wednesday.
Citi had been investigating at least two incidents of alleged abusive behavior involving Ruff.
A senior banker heard Ruff shouting from his office Nov. 13 and walked over to intervene, five sources told Reuters in March. Ruff was upset that two junior bankers on the energy equity capital markets team he leads were not in the room by the time a meeting began, sources told the wire service. One of the junior bankers had dialed into the meeting on time but arrived in person a couple of minutes after it started, two of the sources said. Another junior banker came in shortly afterward, they added.
Separately, another employee — an analyst who is a person of color — told a superior that Ruff had insulted and intimidated him during a half-hour call, according to a Reuters source. Ruff told the analyst he should not bring a complaint to human resources because the people there would not be his “friend,” the source told the wire service.
Ruff had complained to his team Nov. 11, a Saturday, that analysts were not working that day, even though Citi policy gives Saturdays protected status, three sources said. The analyst came to work the following day, a Sunday, to find he was one of two junior bankers on Ruff’s team in the office, according to the source.
Citi offered to move the analyst to a different team, and he accepted, four people familiar with the matter said.
A spokesperson for Citi declined to comment Wednesday to Bloomberg on Ruff’s reported departure. Ruff didn’t respond to a request for comment from the wire service. An email to his Citi account generated an automatic response indicating that his address no longer accepts messages.
Citi in March emphasized that it “provide[s] colleagues with a number of avenues to raise concerns in confidence, and when substantiated, we will take appropriate action, up to and including termination of employment.”
“While we will not comment on individual internal matters, simply put, where warranted, we exit employees who fail to meet our high standards of respectful treatment in our workplace,” a spokesperson for the bank said in March.
The Ruff matter marks at least the second high-profile instance in which Citi’s workplace culture has been called into question.
Ardith Lindsey, a Citi managing director, sued the bank in November, accusing its leaders of tolerating an atmosphere in which she said she was persistently sexually harassed and abused by male executives. Lindsey last month added details to her lawsuit, alleging Citi failed to protect her from a supervisor’s violent threats and ignored multiple complaints from her and other women employees.
Neither would the Ruff case be the first time bullying in a bank setting has come to the fore.
BMO in January fired four Toronto-based mining bankers after the bank internally investigated allegations that a young male colleague was subjected to homophobic slurs and targeted in person and over a video-meeting platform. Two other BMO employees resigned in connection with the case, according to The Globe and Mail.
Ruff joined Citi in 2012, according to his LinkedIn profile, which still lists him as employed there. He spent two years as an investment banking associate, then left in 2014 for Perella Weinberg in a lateral move. Ruff returned to Citi two months later, according to LinkedIn.
