Citigroup board to lose another member

NEW YORK (AP) — Roberto Hernandez Ramirez, a member of Citigroup Inc.’s board of directors and the chairman of its Mexican banking operations, said he will leave his post on the board, according to a regulatory filing.

In letters to Vikrim Pandit, Citi’s chief executive, and Richard Parsons, who is about to become the chairman of the board, Hernandez Ramirez said he would not seek re-election to the board of directors at the New York-based bank’s annual shareholders’ meeting in April.

Hernandez Ramirez is the third board member to announce he will not stay on beyond his current term. Last month, Robert Rubin, a former Treasury Secretary who was a longtime Citigroup board member, and Win Bischoff, most recently chairman at Citigroup, both announced their retirement from the company.

“There is a whole rebuild of the board going on right now,” said Alois Pirker, a senior analyst at Aite Group. “It’s not necessarily a surprise these announcements are coming in.”

Pirker noted that wholesale changes on a company’s board are fairly normal when a new chairman is installed, as the new head of the board looks to fill out a team of directors that he is familiar with and trusts.

With Citi having struggled amid the ongoing credit crisis, it could also be a sense that it is time for a change with older directors leaving the firm, Pirker said. Hernandez Ramirez has been a member of Citi’s board for about eight years.

In the letters, Hernandez Ramirez said he had been considering leaving Citi’s board of directors for a couple of years and shared that information with Pandit after Pandit was named the company’s CEO late in 2007. Hernandez Ramirez will remain chairman of the board of Banco Nacional de Mexico and as director of Grupo Financiero Banamex.

The letters written Tuesday were part of a filing Citi submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission late Wednesday.

Pirker said it is still uncertain if Hernandez Ramirez would be replaced by someone else from Mexico or the Latin American region.

“The problem with Citi right now is it’s an entity under total reconstruction,” Pirker said. If Citi determines part of its future plans include growing operations in Mexico or Latin America, it would make sense to replace Hernandez Ramirez with someone with experience in that region. But if the financial firm has other plans, it does not necessarily have to replace Hernandez Ramirez with someone from that region.

Citi has been among the hardest hit financial firms during the ongoing credit crisis and recession. It has posted five straight quarterly losses, including a fourth-quarter loss of $8.29 billion.