Michael Helfer

Michael Stevens Helfer was Vice Chairman of Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) from 2012 to 2014, and served as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary from 2003 to 2012, leading over 800 attorneys in approximately 100countries. Before joining Citigroup in 2003, Mr. Helfer was President of Strategic Investments and Chief Strategic Officer at Nationwide Insurance. Until 2000, he was a Partner and Chairman of the Management Committee of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale) in Washington, D.C., where he had practiced since 1973.​

Mr. Helfer is a member of the American Law Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the Audit Advisory Committee of the U.S. Government Accountability Office. He formerly served as Chairman of The Clearing House Association, a trade association representing 24 of the largest commercial banks which collectively employed over two million people and held more than half of all U.S. banking deposits, and was Vice Chairman of the Regulatory Oversight Committee of the Financial Services Roundtable, which represented the 100 largest financial services firms. The two trade associations merged in July 2018 to become the Bank Policy Institute. Mr. Helfer served as a Director, and Chairman of the Governance Committee, of EP Energy Corp. (NYSE:EP) from 2014 to 2017, and currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Banco Nacional de Mexico, S.A. (Banamex), an indirect subsidiary of Citigroup and the second largest bank in Mexico.​

He received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and his B.A. summa cum laude in Economics from Claremont Men's College.​