Sandy Weill hooks Stan Fischer

Weill's latest catch - joining former U.S. Treasury secretary Bob Rubin (now a Citigroup executive committee chairman) and ex-U.S. president Jerry Ford (a Citi honorary director) - is former International Monetary Fund deputy managing director Stan Fischer, who next month becomes a Citi vice chairman. His brief: to build the firm's business with governments and corporations in both developed and emerging markets. No one would ever confuse Weill's tightfisted management style with charity work, but Fischer says his new globe-girdling employer can be a force for positive change in markets that have required IMF intervention. "Citi has the power to do a lot of good," says the Zambian-born Fischer, who graduated from the London School of Economics and earned a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It certainly doesn't have the power that the British Empire once did, but it also has a lot more competition."