Bailout CEOs: 7 down, 2 left

Tuesday’s news that Vikram Pandit is leaving Citigroup marked another milestone in an industry that has seen an enormous amount of turnover of late. Of the nine Wall Street CEOs that were bailed out by the federal government during the dark months of late 2008, Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein and JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon are the only ones left standing. Looking back to the meeting that produced a federal bailout of $700 billion, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. head Sheila Bair reminisces that Pandit was upset with her that day for allowing Wells Fargo to buy Wachovia, which had derailed his own plans to purchase the institution with financial assistance from the FDIC — perhaps not a timely plan given Citigroup’s instability at that time, Bair comments.