Victor Menezes
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Victor J. Menezes (May 14, 1949 - ) is an engineer and banker, who acts as a top official in international financial organizations. He is originally from India and received his degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1970. He received a Master's degree in Management (M.B.A.) from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1972. In the same year, he joined Citicorp in Corporate Banking. Later, he was posted in "practically every continent" -- as one bio-sketch put it. Displaying exemplary banking skills throughout, he rose to the post of Chief Financial Officer in 1995.
Menezes is the Chairman of the Clearing House Association; serves as a trustee of the Asia Society, the Eisenhower Fellowships and the American India Foundation. He was recently named Chairman of the Board of Governors of the National Center for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Menezes is also a member of the Advisory Board of INSEAD. Menezes has been Senior Vice Chairman of Citigroup and was a member of Citigroup’s Management Committee and Business Heads Committee. A 2003 profile of Menezes, by the IIT Bombay Alumni Association of Greater New York, notes that he has earlier been Chairman and CEO of Citibank and headed Citigroup’s Emerging Markets business. Today, the IIT Bombay calls Menezes its "product" who reached the highest levels of banking and finance.
Menezes is believed to have played a key role in crafting a $3 billion write-off in Latin American debt in 1987. This helped open the way for Latin American countries to access capital markets while clearing "an ugly mess from the bank's books".
[edit] Business philosophy
In August 2001, while attending the convocation of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay as chief guest, Menezes told the graduates in a convocation address: "The combination of rigorous thinking, hard work and fundamentals is what you have got from this great institution, and they will be the building blocks in whatever ...career you may choose".
In his view, the globalization of people, technology, finance, consumer products, ideas, etc, is here to stay. But, Menezes went on to argue that the free flow of capital and products and ideas and people is probably the single biggest engine of growth the world possesses and can drive millions out of poverty.
He has said: "Technologies come and go. Much of what you learnt may change five years from now. But, the fundamentals remain. It is clear from all the rubble in Silicon Valley that those people who focussed on core and fundamental technologies prospered, and those caught up in the dot.com marketing phase got burnt up."
[edit] Media statements
Internet site asianindians.com says: "Citi-slicker Victor Menezes (is) one of the earliest Indians to have made their mark in global finance." It goes on to lavish gushing praise and call him "the banker beyond compare".
In 1998, The Wall Street Journal staff reporter Matt Murray commented: "Victor J. Menezes is the rarest of corporate creatures: a Citicorp survivor. A 26-year veteran of that company and its notoriously brutal corporate culture, Mr. Menezes (has just been) handed a tough new job as co-head of the global-investment and corporate bank, with Michael A. Carpenter, at the recently formed Citigroup Inc."
