Cece stewart biography

Cece Stewart on Leaving Citi, Battling Bank's 'Enormous Headwinds'

Cecilia "Cece" Stewart, the veteran retail banker who spent trying to turn around Citigroup's (NYSE:C) flagging U.S. consumer and commercial banking operations, is leaving the company next month.

Citi Chief Executive Michael Corbat Stewart's departure and several other senior management changes in an internal memo on Thursday.

Stewart, who ran the retail bank operations for Wachovia and the private bank at Morgan Stanley (MS) before joining Citigroup in early 2011, will "retire at the end of April to focus her energy on her personal passions and service on several boards," Corbat wrote.

Those passions include her horses and her farm outside of Charlotte, N.C., where her elderly parents live and where Stewart returned most weekends during her tenure at Citigroup's New York headquarters, she said in an interview on Thursday.

"It was a very, very difficult choice," but "I'm going to be 56 in April, Citi appoints Cece Stewart president of U.S.

bank | Reuters CIB