Citigroup, the largest company in the world according to a Forbes Global 2000 report released in March 2007, with assets of over $2.4 trillion, finally found the CEO it has been looking for, namely Vikram Pandit. The investment banker who joined Citigroup six months ago will have the difficult task of driving Citi out of its crisis and get it back on track.

The decision came as a disappointment to some of the investors, who expected someone outside the company to be appointed CEO, and who think that Pandit may not be ready to run such a big public company like Citigroup.

"There was some hope that somebody with a bigger name would be chosen, so maybe from that perspective there is some disappointment," said Lee Delaporte, according to Reuters. Delaporte is currently a research director for Dreman Value Management, a company that already sold its Citi holdings.

The appointment of Win Bischoff also came as a surprise, and most analysts don’t consider naming two new executives as an intelligent move for Citigoup. David Hendler, senior analyst at CreditSights, said in a BusinessWeek report that Citi’s position may become so “precarious” it will have to consider merging with a stronger bank.

Despite the lack of optimism from most investors, Robert Rubin, the interim chairman since November, when former CEO Charles Prince was forced by the shareholder to leave, called Pandit “a genius” in a conference call with analysts and investors. According to BusinessWeek, Rubin also said about Pandit that he has “exceptional insight and strength and a real ability to get things done […] From the beginning I thought we may end up where we did.”

Meanwhile, Pandit has great responsibilities, not only to put an end to analysts’ somber predictions that Citi is too big and should split or that Pandit is not the right man for the job,but to get Citi out of its crisis and to regain the investors’ confidence in Citigroup.