Citi's New CIO Faces High Expectations and High Pressure

Not only will Citi's new CIO Marty Lippert also take on the duties of corporate operations and technology chief operating officer, but the responsibilities will come with extremely high expectations -- namely helping Citi right its ship.As my colleague John Soat at sibling publication InformationWeek points out in his latest entry in the CIOs Uncensored blog, Citi is "looking for a lot from Lippert" and CEO Vikram Pandit is hoping his newest technology chief can drive "enterprise transformation." Soat also adds that the appointment highlights a couple of other CIO trends. First, that Wall Street firms rarely have trouble finding the best and the brightest and that Lippert was the latest CIO to be hired from the outside, a growing trend these days.

But, most surprisingly (or maybe not), a couple of readers were very skeptical of placing so much responsibility and expectations on the CIO. It's true that analysts have been pointing to the CIO as a key driver of change for years, but in practice change is driven from even higher levels of an organization. If Lippert succeeds, it will be a great story to tell and it will come to fruition only if Pandit fully embraces change at Citi, something he appears to be doing. I hope for success, but either way it will make for a great article! Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology. View Full Bio