Michael Mayo (Mike Mayo news) must be cringing. He has been promised an audience with top executives, but I doubt they'll roll out the red carpet. It's unclear whether that audience will include CEP Vikram Pandit (Vikram Pandit news).

Meanwhile, Sanford C. Bernstein bank analyst John McDonald is faring much better in the access department, reports FOX Business. McDonald was able to set up lunch with Pandit and Citigroup CFO John Gerspach for about two dozen institutional clients of his firm.

Through the crisis, the bank has stayed decently engaged with the analyst and investor community, less so with the media. That's perhaps a decent strategy when the news is middling. It may have paid off, as more analysts seem to be favoring Citigroup over Bank of America at the moment.

Now might be a good time for Pandit to get even more proactive. Perhaps he should definitively address the deferred tax asset issue once and for all. It's not a good sign that a former SEC official is saying publicly that a write-down may be in order.

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