Yahoo Finance's On The Move panel discusses the historical announcement of Citi's Jane Fraser as the first woman CEO to lead a major U.S. bank.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: --of Jane Fraser, who is, in February, going to become the CEO at Citi. We learned this morning that Michael Corbat will retire after, what, 37 years at the bank? Julia La Roche, this is big news. Tell me more about what you think is in store for Citi.

JULIA LA ROCHE: OK, so, Adam, this is obviously historic news. Because one of the conversations, just in recent years-- and I had this conversation-- is, will we ever see a female CEO of one of these large, bulge-bracket US banks? And now, for the first time in history, in February of next year, we certainly will. And that is Jane Fraser. She's been at that firm for 16 years. And if you just take a quick look at some of her accomplishments, you can see that she certainly has run a number of the businesses, including serving most recently as the president and CEO of Citi's Global Consumer Banking of Business. I'll just remind folks that is the growth engine of Citigroup.

You're talking about a business that covers 19 different countries. You're talking about retail banking, credit cards, those sorts of things, mortgages, even. But she's also been the CEO of Latin America, another very, very, very important market for Citigroup, which is this global giant when it comes to banking. Also has been the CEO of Citigroup's mortgage business. And this was right after the financial crisis.

And from what I understand, is she really helped rebuild the reputation at the mortgage business. She was also the CEO of the private bank and was, at one point, the global head of the mergers and acquisitions business, the head of client strategy. She started her career at Goldman Sachs in the M and A department. She was a partner at McKinsey, so certainly has quite a formidable career and resume, if you will. And I got to tell you this just very anecdotally, I was at a conference in February of 2019.

And someone from Citigroup just-- and, I was at a conversation-- he said, watch Jane Fraser. And I had never heard of her. And after that, I went listened to a podcast that she did with Poppy Harlow. But that's where I kind of start to get more interested in her and following her career.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Yeah, and I think, to jump onto Julia's point here, it is pretty remarkable the experience that Jane Fraser has built up. As you mentioned, there has been quite a lot of movement inside of Citigroup when you consider that Mark Mason, now currently CFO replacing longtime CFO John Gerspach, in 2018, the company has slimmed down dramatically over the last-- over the last four years under Mike Corbat's tenure there.

But I think it's worth mentioning the history of a woman now heading up this large bank here. When you consider that among the top eight banks in the United States-- keep in mind, these mega banks are much distanced from the other banks that follow in the top 25-- there's never been a head of a bank that's actually been a female at these large corporations that obviously have so much influence in, not just American economics, but in American politics as well. It's worth mentioning that the closest that a woman has gotten to the head of a top-eight bank was at Key Corp, which is only a top 20 bank.

We had Beth Mooney, who was only there-- she recently stepped down in the spring. So if you look at the top-20 US banks, there are no women currently so. Jane Fraser hoping to step that up. In fact, it's worth putting into perspective, there are more people at the heads of large US banks with the last name Gorman than there are women. There's a Gorman at Morgan Stanley. There's a Gorman now a Key Corp. So it's pretty remarkable that it's taken us until 2020 to finally have a woman at the top of the US Bank.

But again, you know, Fraser hopefully heading up Citigroup division will change that landscape in the banking industry.

JULIE HYMAN: And Brian, just to put a finer point on that, this is unique to banks within financial services, right? Because if you look at asset management, if you look at insurance, there are and have been female heads of banks, Abigail Johnson at the head of Fidelity, for example, Michelle Seitz at Russell Investments. And then on the insurance, side we've got some names as well.

So it's interesting, Guy Berger, frequent guest on the program, pointed out, what is it that's different about banking than other parts of financial services that they have not reached this milestone until now? And it's not for any shortage of pipeline, right? You do have a number of prominent women who are in the upper ranks at many banks on Wall Street. So it's interesting that it has taken this long. Kudos to Citi for making this move. But, you know, as always, as as these big institutions, not just on Wall Street, but across corporate America start to look at the structural changes that need to happen, one would hope we'll see more of this.