How Jane Fraser became the first woman to lead a major Wall Street bank

Fraser, who was born and raised in Scotland, began her career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs, specializing in mergers and acquisitions, in 1988.

After two years at the investment bank, Fraser became an associate at Madrid-based securities broker Asesores Bursátiles, where she stayed until 1992.

Fraser left Asesores Bursátiles to pursue an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. In 1994, she joined consulting giant McKinsey & Co., where she served as a partner with a focus on financial services and strategy.

With three McKinsey colleagues, Fraser co-wrote a book published in 1999 titled Race for the World: Strategies to Build a Great Global Firm. The book, which lauded Citi as a model for “leveraging superior business-system productivity costs in different geographies,” brought Fraser to the attention of Michael Klein, Citi’s former CEO of banking.

Klein persuaded Fraser to make the leap to Citi in 2004, following years of prodding. She started out as head of client strategy in the investment and corporate banking division — a role she served in for three years.

In the 14 years that followed, Fraser worked her way up the ranks. She served as the global head of strategy and M&A through the Great Recession. Then came a succession of top positions within the banking giant’s many divisions, including as CEO of Citi private bank, mortgage, U.S. consumer and commercial bank and global mortgages, and Latin America.

She became president and CEO of global consumer banking in October 2019, where she was responsible for all of Citi’s consumer businesses, spanning retail banking and wealth management, credit cards, mortgage and operations, and technology.

In September 2020, Citi CEO Michael Corbat announced his retirement, effective in February 2021, and said Fraser was next in line to replace him. This made Fraser Citi’s first-ever female CEO, and the only woman to helm a big Wall Street bank.

Now in charge of the third-largest U.S. bank, Fraser had her work cut out for her. Its massive size and complex organizational structure made Citi a difficult beast, with a falling stock price and performance that fell short of that of its peers.

Fraser first unveiled her plans for a complete overhaul in March 2022. At the time, she said the bank would embark on a plan to simplify structure, coring down to five key divisions.

Last September, Fraser set that plan into action. The bank announced its largest corporate overhaul in nearly two decades, which involved shedding several management and regional layers — and cutting tens of thousands of jobs in the process.

Fraser has had no illusions about the process, which she has long said would be difficult and painful. She acknowledged after announcing the changes that the transformation will make some employees “very uncomfortable.” (She recently told The Wall Street Journal that she herself feels uncomfortable “every single day.”)

During the second quarter of 2024, Citi’s expenses declined 2% driven by the simplification — a sign that the overhaul is beginning to bear fruit.