The JPMorgan MD who says Citi poached her under false pretences detailed her complaints
Kathleen Martin wasn't sure about leaving JPMorgan for Citi. It was late 2021, and she'd spent four and a half years at JPMorgan after a career at Morgan Stanley and GE Capital. At JPMorgan, Martin was an MD and global technology chief of staff, and her job was secure. But Citi came calling with what Martin says was represented to her as a "long-term leadership position" and she jumped.
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That seems to have been a mistake.
As we've noted before, Martin was fired by Citi in September 2023. She is now bringing a lawsuit against the bank, arguing that she was unfairly dismissed. Martin says she refused to follow orders from Citi COO Anand "Selva" Selvakesari, who allegedly asked her to represent Citi's data transformation effort associated with its $400m fine for data failings in 2020, as more advanced than it really was.
Citi absolutely refutes Martin's claims. In a comment issued today, the bank said: "Ms. Martin's employment was lawfully and legitimately terminated. Her claims to the contrary have no merit and we intend to defend against them in court."
Martin's initial complaint against Citi was filed in May 2024. However, she filed an update yesterday, stressing that although Citi now has 13,000 people working in regulatory compliance, many issues have yet to be addressed.
Prior to being fired, Martin alleges that Selvakesari, who was promoted to COO in March 2023, met with her in May 2023 about a metric called “Authoritative Data Sources” (ADS) required by the consent order. Martin claims that she wanted to accurately tell the board that the bank hadn't made "substantial" progress in designating an ADS for each set of data. However, she says that Selvakesari told her that highlighting the gaps would be a “bad thing,” and claims that he said: “We don’t want the regulators to know that we have, say, 90% gaps.”
Martin alleges that Selvakesari also asked her to describe Citi's “data governance health score” as green when it was in fact red. She says that she accurately reported the metric to the board and regulators as “red.” Two weeks later, she says that Selva fired her.
Citi this month acknowledged the huge amount of work still to be done in its data transformation effort after receiving a $135m fine for failing to fix its data governance issues, among other things. CFO Mark Mason said that although progress is being made, the task is enormous: Citi has 11,000 regulatory reports, including the 2052a liquidity report, which "has 750,000 lines of data." Fortunately, only 30 are relevant to the US regulator which levied the fine.
Martin was the interim data transformation chair at Citi, but she claims that her boss, Karen Peetz, who managed her before Selva, told her the “interim” status was merely a formality to ease her into the role. Peetz allegedly gave examples of other executives who had their interim status lifted in three to five months.
As Citi prepared to defend itself against Martin's claims in court, it's appointed an alternative chief data officer in the form of Japan Mehta, who's been at the bank for six years and who previously worked with Selva in the wealth management and consumer divisions. Martin argues that Mehta is "far less qualified" than she was for a role she sees as the same as her own. Citi, which Martin says accused her of deficits in "engagement", would presumably disagree.
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