NEWSMAKER-Citi's new banking chief hailed for experience

*New Citi banking chief hailed as "Mr. Fix-It"

*Gained experience in real estate crisis of 1990s

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

BOSTON, July 9 (Reuters) - In decades spent working at some of America's best-known financial institutions, Eugene McQuade developed a reputation as a "Mr. Fix-It," investment managers, industry analysts and a former boss said on Thursday.

And that may be exactly what Citigroup Inc (C.N) now needs from McQuade, 60, who has held top-level executive jobs at Merrill Lynch, Freddie Mac, FleetBoston Financial and Bank of America.

McQuade was installed on Thursday as Citi's new banking chief in a major management shake-up that included replacement of the company's chief financial officer.

The native New Yorker, who joined a bank training program right out of college, came of age professionally during the real estate crisis of the early 1990s, said Terrence Murray a former chief executive officer at FleetBoston.

When lenders across the country suffered through the recession and commercial real estate prices were hit especially hard in New England, McQuade quickly developed a talent for isolating problem assets, people who know him said.

At Fleet, McQuade was part of a team that determined what should be sold and at what price, said Murray, who lured McQuade to Boston from New York about two decades ago.