Top Citi Exec Ray McGuire Leaving Bank To Run For Mayor Of New York City

Former Citi top executive Ray McGuire is leaving the bank and is joining the crowded Democratic field running for mayor of New York City. McGuire is currently vice chairman of Citigroup and chairman of banking, capital markets and advisory. 

He told CNBC: “We’re in a war for the survival of this great city. Without a doubt we can do this. From the streets to the suites.”

Citi’s CEO and CEO of the bank’s institutional clients group told employees in a memo on Thursday that McGuire would be leaving to “explore opportunities that will allow him to pursue his lifelong passion for public service.”

He joins a crowded Democratic field for mayor where the ethos between the candidates seems to be “Bill De Blasio is incompetent“. We highlighted days ago that Maya Wiley, a former top attorney for current Mayor Bill De Blasio, had also joined the race. 

“Electing the same kinds of people, bringing the same old broken promises over and over again and expecting things will be different, that’s the risk we cant afford right now,” Wiley had said last week. She called into question De Blasio’s leadership in her campaign announcement. 

McGuire is going to be joined by friend and CEO of Infor Charles Phillips and Valerie Jarrett, a longtime advisor for Barack Obama. Phillips has said he will co-chair McGuire’s campaign. 

He told CNBC: “NYC faces its largest economic challenge in decades and we need to execute with purpose and efficiency. Ray is the right person to lead and unify the city to create something better when we get through this. He took the time to prepare and he’s more than ready to outwork everyone.”

Film director Spike Lee is expected to also be added as a co-chair of the campaign in coming weeks. 

McGuire recently authored a preface to a Citi report called “Closing the Racial Inequality Gaps” where he said: “Yet even today, with all those credentials and as one of the leading executives on Wall Street, I am still seen first as a six-foot-four, two-hundred-pound Black man wherever I go — even in my own neighborhood. I could have been George Floyd.”