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PayPal CEO on turnaround: "at least $1.5 billion of savings"

5 calls: why Citigroup's CEO says the selloff was hedge funds de-risking, how PayPal's CEO says the company lost the consumer, and why its board turned down a buyout approach

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Scuttlebutt
Nov 07, 2026
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Squawk on the Street · Nov 6, 2026 · 46m · 41m saved

With Jane Fraser, Chair & CEO of Citigroup · Enrique Lores, CEO of PayPal

PayPal CEO on turnaround: "at least $1.5 billion of savings"

Photo: Created by Scriptur; cropped by Pixlr, CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikipedia

PayPal has already banked $800 million of the $1.5 billion in AI-driven savings its chief executive promised investors, while Citigroup's chief executive said the Nasdaq's worst session in years was nothing more than hedge funds de-risking. Jane Fraser and Enrique Lores sat for separate interviews on CNBC's Squawk on the Street the morning after that selloff, one dismissing the panic and the other explaining how his own company lost its way.

"One of the key strengths that PayPal has had for a long time is that we are a two sided network, and we lost the focus on the consumer." — Enrique Lores

Jane Fraser, chair and chief executive of Citigroup, spoke from the bank's own TMT investor conference in Pebble Beach. Enrique Lores, eight months into the CEO job at PayPal, is the one deciding whether to keep cutting or sell the company to the private-equity buyers circling it.

The full segment is covered here so you can skip it. 46 minutes of audio, 5 minutes of reading.

Here are the 5 calls that matter.


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Key Takeaways

  • Hedge funds, not retail or institutional investors, drove the Nasdaq's worst session in years, Jane Fraser says

  • AI compute demand hasn't changed, Jane Fraser says, even as power, water and equipment bottlenecks set the real pace of the buildout

  • PayPal lost its focus on the consumer as it over-indexed on the merchant side, Enrique Lores says

  • PayPal has banked $800 million of a promised $1.5 billion in AI-driven savings, with more work to do

  • PayPal's board rejected a $60.50-a-share takeover approach from Stripe and Advent, betting on its own turnaround instead

1. Hedge Funds Drove Selloff

Speaking the morning after the Nasdaq's worst session in years, Jane said nobody should be surprised by a selloff landing two or three days after a major midterm shift, on top of a market she called "priced to perfection."

Hedge funds, not everyday investors, drove the selloff, Jane Fraser says

"If you take a step back, what are we seeing underneath all of this? It's really this action taken by the hedge funds to de-risk." — Jane Fraser

"What's been interesting is a less activity by the institutionals, and also retail has not been playing a role." — Jane Fraser

She does not expect the correction to run deeper or longer, calling a pullback at some point "probably a good thing" rather than a warning sign.

2. AI Demand Isn't Fading

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