Pandit said his priorities will be to simplify the company's organisational structure and "aligning our businesses and resources with appropriate goals and economic realities."

The list of contenders for this job, apart from Vikram Pandit, included Shaukat Aziz, formerly the bank's global private banking business head and most recently the prime minister of Pakistan, and Ajay Banga, who is chief of Citi's international consumer banking group.

Pandit takes over at a time when markets are hit by credit crisis.

The top job had fallen vacant after Charles Prince resigned as Citigroup's chairman and CEO at an emergency board meet on November 4 on the back of losses worth billions of dollars suffered by Citigroup in the subprime crisis.

After Prince's departure, Citigroup named its Europe chairman Win Bischoff as an acting CEO and its executive committee chairman and former US Treasury Secretary Robert E Rubin as chairman on interim basis. Rubin is also part of a search committee for the new chairman and CEO and this committee has been reviewing candidates from both inside and outside the bank.

Pandit's name as the next CEO started doing the rounds ever since it became known that Prince would put in his papers, but the bank had decided to review other candidates as he is rather new at the bank. He took over Citigroup's investment banking operation in early October, just six months after joining the bank.

Shortly after the appointment, Pandit told investors that his first priority would be to improve and enhance productivity. That begins with allocating capital in an objective way where there are clear growth opportunities.