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David Simon, 37
SVP, CitiBusiness Credit Cards
Citigroup
In his citigroup office in Long Island City, Queens, David Simon points himself out in a treasured photograph taken during a Final Four game where he cheered on his beloved University of Michigan Wolverines.
Mr. Simon appears to be facing away from the game during the tip-off, but that’s an illusion. He was captured on film moments before the game began in one of a series of photographs stuck together to create a panoramic image.
Make no mistake, Mr. Simon always faces the action. He was in the thick of it in the early 1990s, when, just out of law school, he was one of the first executives at the Federal Reserve to tackle electronic commerce issues surrounding a newfangled thing called the Internet.
“He was assigned the more complicated applications like Internet banking because he was one of the best attorneys,” recalls his Fed supervisor at the time, Bob Frierson.
In 1996, Mr. Simon’s work on the legal complications of Internet banking led to a series of Web-related jobs at Citibank, first in electronic banking, then in negotiating the placement of Citibank ads and payment services on the Internet.
When Citigroup folded the Internet unit into other parts of the bank, Mr. Simon landed in another hot area: the hugely profitable small business credit cards sector. Since he took over the business unit in November 2002, CitiBusiness’ receivables and profits have both zoomed by 50%. Total billings came to about $10 billion last year, according to the bank.
Mr. Simon attributes his success to focusing on customers. “The fundamentals of the business are the customers,” he says. “They’re where the growth comes from.”