Dive Brief:

• Titi Cole, Citi’s head of legacy franchises, is retiring from the bank at the end of June after having a “great experience there,” she told Banking Dive via LinkedIn message Wednesday. Her departure was announced via internal memo seen Tuesday by Reuters and the Financial Times.
• Cole, arguably Citi’s highest-profile Black woman, was put in charge of implementing the bank’s wide-ranging reorganization, which began in September. Since February 2022, she also has overseen the bank’s effort to retreat from 14 foreign retail markets.
• Cole will become executive director of a nonprofit focused on women and healthcare, Reuters reported.

Dive Insight:

Cole’s departure is unrelated to Citi’s restructuring, a person familiar with the matter told the Financial Times, adding that Cole had been planning to leave Citi before the revamp was announced.

“I am thankful for the journey and that I get to decide that it is time to say goodbye and pursue other passions,” Cole said in a LinkedIn post Wednesday. “I am very fortunate to close out my banking career at Citi ... In the last few years, I’ve had the incredible opportunity to work with colleagues around the world who delivered with excellence for the firm and our clients as we sought to divest our international consumer businesses and simplify the firm in a very significant and meaningful way.”

Cole is not the only executive to be leaving Citi. Mike Whitaker, the bank’s head of operations and technology, is departing also, according to the memo.

The bank, however, has hired Tim Ryan, formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers’s U.S. senior partner, to serve as Citi’s head of technology and business enablement. The latter half of that title encompasses the legacy franchises Cole led, according to the Financial Times.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle Ryan faces on the legacy front is resolution regarding Citi’s Mexico franchise. The bank last year abandoned a plan to sell its consumer, small-business and middle-market banking operations in the country, after what could be seen as repeated interference from Mexico’s president. Citi expects an initial public offering for its Mexico business in 2025.

Cole and Whitaker are leaving Citi less than two months after the bank said it had “concluded the major actions” of its reorganization. The job toll from the effort stood at 7,000 as of the end of March — far less than the 20,000 positions Citi has said it intends to eliminate by 2026.

Cole joined Citi in 2020 from Wells Fargo, where she served as executive vice president and head of operations, according to her LinkedIn profile. She previously held five- and six-year stints, respectively, at Bank of America and BMO Harris. Before being tapped as CEO of legacy franchises, Cole led fraud prevention efforts at Citi’s global consumer bank and served as chief client officer for personal banking and wealth management, according to a biography on Citi’s website.

“My career has not been a linear path, but it has exceeded my biggest dreams,” Cole said in her LinkedIn post.

Whitaker joined Citi in 2009 as head of markets technology and has served in various capacities, including regional chief information officer, head of technology for the bank’s institutional clients group, and head of securities and banking operations and technology. He has also worked for Deutsche Bank and Barclays, according to his bio page on Citi’s website.

Ryan had been the front-runner to serve as global chair of PwC, but withdrew late last year after facing opposition, the Financial Times reported. Ryan had said he planned to retire at the end of June. 

PwC said Tuesday that Paul Griggs would become its U.S. senior partner, effective immediately.