Following two decades of uncertain leadership, Citigroup now needs a steady hand to bring the bank to its full potential, noted bank analyst Dick Bove said Tuesday on CNBC.

"If people want to stop and think about this company over time, what you've had is six different CEO management teams running this company," he said. "Each one of them had a tenure of maybe three years."

On "Fast Money," Bove, of Rafferty Capital Markets, ran through the leadership over the years by name, adding, "What I'm saying to you is that this company is poorly managed, and if you were working for this company, you wouldn't know if they were going to sell the division out from under you. You wouldn't know what direction that company was going in over the next two to three years."

Bove, who does not hold a position in Citigroup, upgraded his rating on the stock to "hold" from "sell," with a price target of $48 per share.

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Following Citigroup's annual shareholder meeting in St. Louis, Bove said that CEO Michael Corbat and Chairman Mike O'Neill needed to stick around.

"I think Michael Corbat and Mike O'Neill must stay in place. Whether they're great or not great, I don't know, but they better stay there," he said. "They better stay there for 10 years. They better articulate a single strategy and execute on that strategy because that's something that Citigroup has not done for 20 years. So, it's a very high-risk company."

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Bove wasn't moved by the argument that Citi stock was below tangible book value.

"I never hear the people who say that say why this stock is selling at a big discount to book value and why the problem associated with selling at that discount is going to go away," he said.

—By CNBC's Bruno J. Navarro