Citi Puts Dealmaker on Leave, Probes Treatment of Junior Banker
Anyone see this?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-1…
Citigroup Inc. placed a senior dealmaker within its equity capital markets group on leave as the firm investigates a complaint regarding a verbal altercation with a junior banker, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Edward Ruff, a New York-based managing director in the investment banking unit that handles initial public offerings and other stock deals, was suspended from work in January and has yet to return, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the review hasn’t been widely disclosed. Ruff publicly berated a junior banker, who is a person of color, in the office, leading to a complaint about the language he used, said the people.
“The work to have an inclusive and equitable workplace culture never stops, and ensuring that these standards are well understood and complied with by everyone at Citi is a continuous, proactive process,” Citigroup said in an emailed statement. “We provide 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.”
Dei hiring getting deal makers fired you hate to see it but that is what these MDs get for not pushing back on diversity hiring.
Really, that’s what you got out of the situation? It sounds like he used targeted discriminatory language. Now that’s not acceptable, DEI hiring gone rampant or not
Yeah, that's what I got out of this situation. The fact of the matter is, if he was verbally abusing a non-DEI hire, there would be no punishment and HR would have done nothing. Let's be real; the only reason there was any form of punishment is that these banks are afraid of civil rights lawsuits. DEI hires have used it as a weapon so they don't get fired and don't receive any other forms of criticism.
kind of have a point. you never see seniors being fired for throwing phones at us lmao
Alright, as a POC, here's my two cents. I don't know what exactly was said, but I'd rather be called a useless sack of shit for example rather than be called a slur or be insulted in some other discriminatory way. At least with the former it's like, OK, that's harsh but I can learn from the situation in some form and try to do X, Y, Z better. The latter...I mean, my race is out of my control, so fuck off.
.
Watch your semicolon use please. Not sure why you were hired with such a poor grasp of basic grammar
Young'uns constantly bitching and whining about abusive bankers and when one actually faces consequences, iTZ dIvERsITY....y'all are unbelievable.
Fuck any senior guy ripping on young bucks for showing up late and being an asshole about not working protected weekends. Imagine how bad is it when another MD has to step in to tell you to cool your shit.
Truth be said, no one should be verbally abused in the workplace. It's likely this escalated because the victim is a person of color, but in reality the workplace should be a respectful place
This comment has been deleted.
I worked with him personally. For context, ECM was one of the toughest groups you could be in at Citi (inseparable from your desk at all times like a trader while finishing at 2 or 4am every day including Fridays and another 8 to 12 hours on Sundays). Depending on which group you were in, you either could recycle market updates for multiple pitches or you would have to create new slides each time because the senior was "bored". With that context, I did want to mention in Ed's fairness that he hosted the analyst appreciation party for the entire group several years in a row. As someone who cares about fairness, I don't think that he should be the only one being singled out right now. Imho it seemed like some seniors of that team took pleasure in coming up with new ways to punish their juniors. As an example, another MD on the team would offer to buy bubble tea for the analysts supporting him. He would use that as a mechanism to leave someone out when he wanted to punish said first year analyst - someone who probably had to work until 2 or 4am consecutively for months. Another director would look up people who failed the licensing exams. It takes a special kind of person to go out of their way to dig through FINRA when they have a jam packed work and family schedule and an even more special person to weaponize that information against someone a decade younger. Analysts supporting these groups would be terrified to ask questions and would have to huddle together to interpret the chicken scratch comments scribbled on decks. All I can say is that Citi has quite a bit of spring cleaning to do if they are actually committed to changing their culture as they say they are.
Sounds like not much has changed at CMO since back when Tyler ran it.
Are there any groups at Citi that don't have this kind of culture lol? M&A is exactly like you described, I've heard industrials is terrible, etc
depending on subvertical FIG has pretty good culture, but also very few MDs in NYC
Thanks for chiming in and joining the chat Ed
NM
I’ve worked in this group and with Ed.
As far as DEI hires go, it was starting to get out of hand. In some cases, certainly not all cases, there was a very distinct gap in capabilities between some juniors due to a shift in hiring objectives.
As far as Ed goes, this was only a matter of time. The examples mentioned in the article were weekly occurrences. He means well, but unfortunately disregards a reasonable level of respect and empathy whilst lacking self control. This often resulted in undesirable interactions and incidents that led to a certain reputation in the group and on the floor.
Ed Ruff on leave, but no mention of Ed Gentle who continues on...
Have a great weekend, Folks!
anyone cringe at "POC"
person of color
what color?
who defines what that is? Are indians POC? Chinese? Japanese? Italians.
Feels like I live in clown world with everyone so obsessed with their racial identity
The sole purpose of language like that is to foment division, ironically under the guise of “inclusion.” I’m
convinced all of this shit is the work of hostile foreign government(s). Don’t need to fire a single shot or launch a single missile against America when you can pump identity politics directly into peoples’ brains via Tik Tok 24/7.
THIS. instead of blaming weak deal activity after an unprecedented COVID boom… let’s blame everything on DEI. lol this industry is full of insufferable dumbasses
poc=black
lol to me POC just means anyone that isn't white.
Does anyone know what he actually said? I can’t interpret from the quote if he said a slur or if he was just harsh. Huge ramifications one way or the other depending on that.
He basically said a bunch of shit which has been said many times before but mentioned color of the person while doing so.
but the offensive part was not the color.
”you are a piece of shit” vs “you are a brown piece of shit”. Is one worse than the other?
You DEI sympathizers are the biggest fuckin bitches the world has seen. And you’re wrecking every objective measure society has with your ass backwards ideology. I can’t wait until the Supreme Court finally nixes this bullshit for what it is which is racism. Fuckin losers
Cope and seethe
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