Cutting 50,000 jobs is a curious way to improve employee morale, but for Vikram Pandit it is a last-ditch effort to turn Citigroup around.

At a "town hall meeting" to rally the troops, the giant bank said that it would eliminate 50,000 jobs, or about 14 percent of the workforce as of the end of September. It also plans to cut expenses by 20 percent and to continue to reduce assets.

The cuts are a bold step by an executive who has been criticized in some quarters for moving too slowly and too cautiously. Since taking over last December, Pandit has moved to cut back the bank's risky assets and to raise capital. The management ranks have been reshuffled and costs were already being cut. In the most recent quarter, Citigroup eliminated 11,000 jobs and shed some $50 billion in assets.

But now Pandit has sharply raised the ante. The pressure on him grew last week, when Citigroup's stock price sank into the single digits for the first time since the financial colossus was created in 1998. Over the last four quarters, the bank has lost more than $20.2 billion.

Even in good times, Citigroup was stumbling under its own weight, suffering from high costs, a lack of coordination among operations, and underinvestment in technology and businesses. The collapse of the subprime mortgage market and the resulting credit crunch has raised questions about how long it can go on staggering.

Pandit is betting that a leaner (one of the slides in the town hall presentation is titled "Getting Fit—Fast!"), better-capitalized Citi is in a position to capitalize on its global presence. The U.S. economy may be moribund for months to come, but nearly half of Citigroup's business is outside the United States, with nearly 35 percent in emerging markets.