Meredith Ann Whitney (born November 20, 1969) is an American businesswoman hailed as “The Oracle of Wall Street” by Bloomberg. She is known for successfully forecasting the difficulties of Citigroup and other major banks during the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Education and career Whitney grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. She graduated from Madeira School in 1987, before attending a post-graduate year at Lawrenceville School, becoming a member of its first co-ed graduating class. She graduated with honors from Brown University in 1992 with a B.A. in History. Whitney joined Oppenheimer Holdings in 1993 as a Director, and in 1995 she joined the company's Specialty Finance Group. In 1998, she left Oppenheimer to become an Executive Director at Wachovia. Whitney returned to Oppenheimer in 2004, where she researched banks and brokers as a Managing Director. She resigned from Oppenheimer on February 19, 2009, to establish her own firm, Meredith Whitney Advisory Group (MWAG), where she produced company-specific equity research on financial institutions and analyzed the sector's operating environment. In 2013, Whitney de-registered MWAG and started her own hedge fund, Kenbelle Capital LP. In December 2015, she joined Bermudan insurer Arch Capital Group as a manager overseeing outside investment firms. In April 2021, she was announced as CFO of Kindbody, a high-growth health and technology company. Professional recognition Whitney issued a particularly pessimistic, but accurate, research report on Citigroup on October 31, 2007, to which many Wall Street analysts, and the news media, paid attention. She noted that the bank's dividends paid out to investors were greater than its profits at the time, and made the case that this would lead to bankruptcy. Shortly after the report's publication and a sharp drop in Citigroup's stock, Charles Prince resigned as the bank's CEO and his successor slashed the dividend. Earlier that year, Forbes magazine had listed Whitney as the second-best stock picker in the capital-market industry. Citigroup stock went on to lose 97% of its value by early 2009. Whitney's extremely bearish view on banks landed her on the cover of the August 18, 2008, issue of Fortune magazine. Even before the problems that befell Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers in September, she said, "It feels like I'm at the epicenter of the biggest financial crisis in history." That year, Fortune listed her among the "50 Most Powerful Women in Business", The New York Post listed her among the "50 Most Powerful Women