“THERE is no natural successor at Citigroup because the company is itself an unnatural act,” argued the Wall Street Journal's Deal Journal blog after Chuck Prince, Citi's boss, quit on November 4th, before he could be fired. The gist of the argument is that “Citigroup has proven itself so complex as to be ungovernable. So ungovernable that even the man once given the levers of the U.S. economy, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, has begged off the task.”

The only person Deal Journal thinks is equipped to do the job is Joe Torre, who managed the New York Yankees brilliantly for the last dozen years before quitting at the end of last season. Mr Torre “has proven he can inspire loyalty from a group of the overpaid and petulant.” Alas for Citi, he already has a new job managing the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Reuters

Off with his head

Dealbreaker, a website that covers Wall Street, has joined the throng nominating “someone for Citi CEO who's so completely inappropriate for the position, whose nomination is so totally insane that it might actually work”, by unfunnily suggesting Hitler.

Its readers favour, among others, Maria “Money Honey” Bartiromo, a CNBC anchor, presumably because of her familiarity with the bank's executive jet (which scandal contributed to the firing by Mr Prince of one potential successor, Todd Thomson); Greg Norman, a professional golfer—presumably because of revelations that, whilst the credit markets froze during the summer, Wall Street bosses seemed to spend most of their time on the golf course (when not smoking joints); and Stan O'Neal, fired last week as boss of Merrill Lynch. Indeed, Mr O'Neal might have some appeal to those Citi board members who think the firm is bloated and in need of a boss willing to wield an axe - which he certainly was at Merrill.

The last thing Citi needs, it seems, is someone like Mr Prince, a former lawyer who seems to have struggled with most of his duties at Citi. Admittedly, he did brilliantly the one thing he was asked to do when he took the job: he kept his predecessor, the 74-year-old Sandy Weill, out of trouble (and perhaps jail), for his part in the bank's key roles in many of Wall Street's worst moments at the turn of the century.

If Citi's board wants another political operator, perhaps it could tempt Dick Parsons, who announced on November 5th that he is giving up the chief executive role at Time Warner. He certainly did a decent if unspectacular job of steadying a troubled ship, following Time Warner's disastrous merger with AOL.

The legacy of an ill-advised merger or three is one of Citi's biggest problems. Mr Parsons, however, is likely to opt for spending time enjoying his new vineyard whilst contemplating a run in New York's next mayoral election.

Given Mr Thomson's departure, and dissatisfaction at the performance of head of wealth management, Sallie Krawcheck, when she was chief financial officer, internal candidates are thin on the ground. This presumably why the board have opted for a temporary double act at the top: Mr Rubin as chairman and Sir Win Bischoff, a European banking éminence grise, an interim chief executive

It is generally assumed that Citi needs to be broken up, as it is unmanageable in its current form, which resulted from Mr Weill's throwing together of Travelers Group with Citibank back in 1998. It is a sprawling financial supermarket, spanning wealth management, consumer banking and investment banking, that has never delivered the synergy Mr Weill promised.

But it is not clear that any serious effort has ever been made to find that synergy. The years immediately after the merger were dominated by such fierce infighting between Mr Weill and Citibank's veteran chairman John Reed that Mr Rubin was recruited to make peace between the warring factions—something he never really managed to do.

Intriguingly, however, in recent months, due to pressure from Citi's biggest shareholder, Prince Waleed bin Talal, and an outside activist investor, Eddie Lampert, the bank is rumoured to have actually started to put economics before internal politics.

In particular, the new chief financial officer, Gary Crittenden, has been leading a crusade to allocate capital between business units on the basis of expected return on investment, not on whose back the business-unit boss has been scratching. Indeed, Mr Crittenden, recruited in March from American Express, looks a decent bet for the top job.

Business.view's top choice, however, is Shaukat Aziz. The 58-year-old joined Citibank in 1969, and worked in various parts of its global empire—including Britain, Greece and Malaysia—before eventually becoming global head of Citi's private bank. So he knows the firm well, and certainly has good international experience.

He left in 1999 to become the finance minister of Pakistan; he is now prime minister. Pakistan's economy has flourished during this time, even as its politics have deteriorated. Given the country's current state of emergency, he may be tempted to find an exit. He would surely be alone amongst potential recruits in regarding the job as an opportunity for a quieter life.

The people's choice, of course, is Jamie Dimon, the boss of JP Morgan, a rival banking giant. For many years he was regarded as Mr Weill's adopted son and heir apparent, until he quit Citi in November 1998 after the two men fell out. One book about Mr Weill was entitled, “King of Capital”. Having already been succeeded by one Prince, will Mr Weill's crown now pass to the real dauphin? Or, stranger still, will the king himself reclaim the throne from which he was so rudely ejected four years ago, under pressure from the regulators.