Citi University: Inside the Bank's CEO Alumni Network

Want to run a big bank someday? Go work for Citigroup (C).

The third-largest U.S. bank has fallen on hard times in recent years, but its name still pops up with Ivy League frequency on the resumes of financial chief executives. Now that Citi-trained bankers have landed two prominent CEO jobs this fall, the bank's alumni run four of the country's biggest financial companies: JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Visa (V), MasterCard (MA) and Citigroup itself. The graduate network extends internationally; this summer, British bank Barclays (BCS) chose former Citi banker Antony Jenkins as its new CEO.

Citigroup's diverse mixture of operations, large international footprint and lively internal politics have served as a proving ground for bankers who want to run their own companies, according to former executives and recruiters. While the bank has struggled to retain talent over the years, especially after the financial crisis, working there offers opportunities — and challenges — few other financial companies can match.

"Citi has always been a very dynamic organization, very political, always changing," says Richard Lipstein, a managing director at recruiting firm Gilbert Tweed. "If you survive it and run a good business, it almost makes you qualified to get to the next level, whether there or moving to another company."

That always-changing political climate was on full display this fall, when Citigroup's board abruptly fired CEO Vikram Pandit and replaced him with bank lifer Michael Corbat. Corbat's 29 years at Citi and its predecessors include stints running the bank's operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and overseeing Citi's efforts to dispose of unwanted businesses after the financial crisis.

Corbat and other Citi veterans have had "exposure to really good quality and well-rounded experience, with an international component," says Cliff Rossi, a former chief risk officer for Citi's consumer lending group. "While Citi has certainly gone through its trials and tribulations through the crisis … by and large this is an institution that has a very lengthy pedigree."

Visa grabbed a piece of that pedigree this fall, when it hired Citigroup alumnus Charles Scharf as its new CEO. Scharf experienced the good and the bad of the bank's tumultuous environment: he got his start at Citi predecessor Commercial Credit, where he first worked for his longtime boss Jamie Dimon and saw the series of mergers that created the modern Citigroup. He also saw Citi Chairman Sandy Weill publicly (and bitterly) break with Dimon after years of grooming him for the succession.

Scharf followed Dimon to what would eventually become JPMorgan Chase, getting more leadership training as he ran the bank's retail financial services unit for almost a decade. He also continued working closely with Dimon, widely considered to be one of the country's best bankers, before taking an apparent demotion last year.