Troubled outfits like Citigroup keep hiring Parsons because he's a master in the art of the relationship
Jeff Mermelstein
Photograph by Jeff Mermelstein for Bloomberg Businessweek; Parsons's A-List: Bloomberg (11); Getty Images (8)Story Tools
The room itself hasn't changed much since Billie Holiday sang here decades ago, but tonight it's filled with the foundation's donors—mostly white hedge fund guys—and their female companions. A handful of guitarists, drummers, keyboard players, and even a saxophone-playing blues vocalist from New Orleans—most of them black—are standing by to provide the evening's entertainment. The two groups maintain a polite but awkward distance.
Finally someone arrives who can bridge the cultural gulf. Richard D. Parsons, the 62-year-old chairman of Citigroup (C), strolls through the doorway with his wife, Laura. His beard is closely cropped and he wears rimless glasses, a brown sport coat, black shirt, and no tie. At 6 foot 4, he towers over his spouse. His singular talent, which has powered his career to the top of some of America's most prominent—and troubled—companies, is one he demonstrates tonight as he mingles easily with the musicians and the money men: He is flat-out smooth.
"Dick, I saw on TV that you own a winery," says a singer with curly blond hair who bills herself as the "legendary Sweet Georgia Brown." "I want to sing the jingle for it."
"We don't have a jingle," says Parsons, "but if we get one, you're the one to sing it."
Michael E. Novogratz, a director of Fortress Investment Group (FIG), a New York hedge fund, gives Parsons a hug and presents him with a Montecristo cigar. Parsons looks pleased. "Oh man," he says, "I wish we could light these up in here." The two men exchange condolences about the market, which is zig-zagging with the turmoil in the Middle East. "I lost more money this week than I did in any week in 2008," Novogratz laments. Parsons tells him not to be so hard on himself. "Nobody knows what's going on," he says.
Wendy Oxenhorn, the Jazz Foundation's executive director, gets on the microphone and announces that Novogratz has just contributed $1 million to the group. Then she praises Parsons for his contribution. "Five years ago our chairman died," she says. "I asked Dick if he would be chairman. He said, 'I'll be interim chairman.' Five years later, he's still interim chairman."
Soon, the singing tenor-sax player is regaling the donors with an animated rendition of bluesman Jimmy Reed's working-class protest anthem, Big Boss Man. When he gets to the chorus, the New Orleans musician looks directly at Parsons and wags his finger with mock admonishment as he sings the familiar lines, "Big boss man. Can't you hear me when I call. Oh, you ain't so big. You just tall, that's all."
Taking care of a foundation devoted to helping struggling musicians is an appropriate gig for Dick Parsons, and not simply because he's a devoted jazz fan. Three times in his career he has found himself steering companies fighting to survive. In 1990 he became chief executive officer of Dime Savings Bank as it nearly went under during the savings and loan crisis. In 2002, Parsons was made CEO of AOL Time Warner, the world's largest media company at the time and the stumbling child of arguably the worst merger in U.S. history. And in February 2009, Parsons became the chairman of Citigroup, a ward of the government after nearly failing several months earlier. It was Parsons's job to mollify regulators in Washington so that the bank's inexperienced CEO, Vikram Pandit, could focus on saving the financial institution.
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