Edward Ruff, 40 year-old Citigroup MD accused of shouting at juniors, had a rough start
It's been a rough few months for Edward Ruff, a 40-year-old managing director at Citigroup in New York.
Get Morning Coffee ☕ in your inbox. Sign up here.
Ruff, who is in Citi's industrials, energy and power team and who was promoted to managing director in 2021, has been put on leave, says Reuters. He is accused of berating juniors.
Citi declined to comment on Ruff's allegedly poor behavior. Reuters alleges that he shouted insults at members of his team following a November meeting in Citi's New York headquarters. Ruff was reportedly unhappy after some team members arrived late. Reuters claims he was shouting so loudly that a fellow MD, James Maitland, came to intervene. Maitland did not confirm this to Reuters.
On a separate occasion, a few days earlier, a new analyst who joined Citi through a diversity program in July 2023, is said to have reported to a senior Citi employee that Ruff had intimidated him during a telephone call. Having done so, Reuters claims that Ruff told the minority analyst not to go to HR. Bloomberg says the analyst concerned is a person of color.
Ruff also stands accused of complaining when his analysts didn't work Saturdays, even though Citi operates a protected Saturdays program where analysts get the day off.
Ruff didn't immediately respond to a request to comment on the allegations. He is, effectively, a Citigroup lifer, having joined the bank in 2012. However, Ruff's career hasn't been entirely plain sailing.
Ruff grew up in a solidly middle class Chicago family (his father runs a large law firm), before attending Gies College of Business in Champaign, Illinois. From there, he went into professional services instead of Wall Street, beginning his career at KPMG. Only after four years at KPMG, followed by an MBA at Vanderbilt University, did he penetrate Citi.
After two years at Citi, Ruff made a break for the higher pay and higher prestige on offer at boutique firm Perella Weinberg Partners. His FINRA registration shows him joining PWP at the end of June 2014 and leaving again at the start of August. No reason is given for his swift departure.
Ruff, therefore, was a non-target hire. He was also an MBA associate and was never an investment banking analyst himself. Plus, he has at least one experience of a new job not working out, for reasons that are unclear. It might be supposed that he would be more sympathetic. Maybe he will be now.
Citi is investigating the claims.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com in the first instance. Whatsapp/Signal/Telegram also available (Telegram: @SarahButcher)
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)
