Today I was reading about women on corporate boards and how women have the reputation of asking very direct questions - a good thing, in my book.

Here's another woman who wrote some pretty direct stuff about Citibank and is now getting death threats because the stock tumbled after her report. Goodness knows what threats she will receive when they hear the CEO is going to resign!

Here's the story from the London Times Online:

Meredith Whitney, the analyst who prompted a $369 billion (£177 billion) plunge in the value of US shares on Thursday by issuing a negative note on Citigroup, hit out at Wall Street’s culture of intimidation yesterday after receiving several death threats from investors in the bank.

Ms Whitney, a CIBC analyst who is married to the former World Wrestling Entertainment champion Death Mask, prompted a near 7 per cent drop in Citigroup’s shares on Thursday, after suggesting that the bank needed to raise more than $30 billion to restore its capital cushion.

She also downgraded her recommendation on Citigroup’s shares to “market underperform” in the note that set off America’s biggest stock market decline since August.

Ms Whitney, Forbes’s second-highest ranked stock picker for 2007, told The Times: “People are scared to be negative, especially when a company has such a wide holding. Clients are not pleased with my call and I have had several death threats.

“But it was the most straightforward call I’ve made in my career and I am surprised my peer analysts have been resistant. It’s so straightforward, it’s indisputable.”

Ms Whitney, whose marriage to John Charles Layfield, the wrestler, 2½ years ago was detailed in The New York Times, said that she has never felt any pressure from the Wall Street firms themselves to be positive. But she said investors could be “nasty and belligerent” if they felt you had lost them a lot of money by influencing the price of their shares.

“No one had the moxie to put in print what I put in print,” she said.

Ms Whitney’s note came two weeks after Citigroup reported a 57 per cent drop in its third-quarter profits, following a $6.5 billion writedown, much of which related to the credit crunch.

That writedown intensified recurring calls for Chuck Prince, Citigroup’s head, to stand down, although he remains at the helm of the world’s biggest bank.

But in a move that will fuel speculation about his position, Mr Prince yesterday cancelled a speech he had been due to give tomorrow at the US Japan Business Conference. A Citigroup spokesman said he had cancelled the appearance to prepare for the company’s new listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Monday.

Ms Whitney, 37, met Mr Layfield in 2003 when they were panelists on Bulls & Bears, a programme on Fox News.

Mr Layfield credits Ms Whitney with helping to make him more sophisticated. The New York Times reported him saying at their wedding: “She took a country boy like me and kind of refined me. I know what fork to use now at the dinner table, and I drink my beer from a glass.”

So was anyone, other than me, completely offended by this story on many fronts, but most importantly that she was tagged immediately as being married to a WWE wrestler? Sort of took the wind out of the next (and real) honor she has earned "Forbes’s second-highest ranked stock picker for 2007".

My lead would have read:

Meredith Whitney, Forbes' second-highest ranked stock picker for 2007 and the only analyst who had big enough ovaries to report the truth, issued a negative note on Citigroup, prompting a $369 billion (£177 billion) plunge in the value of US shares on Thursday.

I might have added:

To whom she is married and what she does in her spare time has nothing to do with the dismal failures at Citigroup and have not been included in this story because they are not relevant.

The reporter, Tom Bawden in New York, might want to put his sexism away for his next story, or he may have to suffer the wrath of women worldwide - although we draw the line at death threats!

Gillian Parrillo
SacWomen