Citigroup’s former Indian-American CEO Vikram Pandit is partnering with the co-author of the popular “Freakonomics” book series to launch a new consulting business, according to a media report.
Citigroup’s former Indian-American CEO Vikram Pandit is partnering with the co-author of the popular “Freakonomics” book series to launch a new consulting business, according to a media report.
Aimed at helping companies improve their cultures and use of technology, Pandit’s new firm called TGG, is promoting “a novel approach to address the challenges that large complex organizations face in compliance, fraud, corruption, and culture and reputation,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
“We think the results are transformative for companies looking to create a culture of performance and integrity,” Hamid Biglari, one of Pandit’s former Citigroup lieutenants and a managing partner of the new venture, was quoted as saying in an email to top executives at Deutsche Bank.
Another plus, according to the email cited by the Journal: Pandit and Biglari’s “domain expertise” from their time running Citigroup. Biglari’s email says TGG’s partners include Steven Levitt, co-author of the “Freakonomics” series that combines economics with everyday decision-making, and Daniel Kahneman, a winner of the Nobel Prize in economics. Levitt and Kahneman already helped create a Chicago-based consulting firm called The Greatest Good.
The venture is the latest effort by the 57-year-old Pandit to bounce back after leaving Citigroup two years ago. TGG’s aim is to use insights into human behaviour, economics and so-called big data-the crunching of ever-greater volumes of information more quickly and deeply-to help large, complex companies analyze employee behavior, management decision-making, business models and strategy, the Journal said.
The new company doesn’t have any clients yet, but Pandit and Biglari plan to use their networks of CEO contacts around the world to identify prospective customers in the banking industry and beyond, it said citing a person with knowledge of their plans.
