How to Build a Financial Empire: Investment Banks, Insurance, Consumer Loans & Stocks (2003)
Sanford I. "
Sandy" Weill (born March 16, 1933) is an
American banker, financier and philanthropist. He is a former chief executive and chairman of Citigroup. He served in those positions from
1998 until
October 1, 2003, and
April 18,
2006, respectively.
Weill, shortly after graduating from
Cornell University, got his first job on
Wall Street in
1955 -- as a runner for
Bear Stearns. In
1956, Weill became a licensed broker at Bear Stearns. Rather than making phone calls or personal visits to solicit clients, Weill found he was far more comfortable sitting at his desk, poring through companies' financial statements and disclosures made to the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. For weeks his only client was his mother, Etta, until
Joan persuaded an ex-boyfriend to open a brokerage account.
While working at Bear Stearns, Weill was a neighbor of
Arthur L. Carter who was working at
Lehman Brothers.
Together with
Roger Berlind and
Peter Potoma they would form
Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill in May
1960. In 1962 the firm became
Carter, Berlind & Weill after the
New York Stock Exchange brought disciplinary proceedings against Potoma.
In
1968, with the departure of
Arthur Carter, the firm was renamed
Cogan, Berlind, Weill & Levitt (
Marshall Cogan,
Arthur Levitt), or
CBWL jokingly referred to on Wall Street as "
Corned Beef With
Lettuce". Weill served as the firm's Chairman from
1965 to
1984, a period in which it completed over 15 acquisitions to become the country's second largest securities brokerage firm.
The company became
CBWL-Hayden, Stone, Inc. in
1970;
Hayden Stone, Inc. in
1972;
Shearson Hayden Stone in
1974, when it merged with
Shearson Hammill & Co.; and
Shearson Loeb Rhoades in
1979, when it merged with
Loeb, Rhoades, Hornblower & Co.
With capital totaling $250 million, Shearson Loeb Rhoades trailed only
Merrill Lynch as the securities brokerage industry's largest firm.
In
1981, Weill sold Shearson Loeb Rhoades to
American Express for about $930 million in stock. (Sources differ on the precise figure.) In
1982, he founded the
National Academy Foundation with the
Academy of Finance to educate students that would graduate from
High School. Weill began serving as president of
American Express Co. in
1983 and as chairman and
CEO of American Express's insurance subsidiary,
Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, in 1984. Weill was succeeded by his protégé,
Peter A. Cohen, who became the youngest head of a Wall Street firm. While at American Express, Weill began grooming his newest protégé,
Jamie Dimon, the future CEO of
JPMorgan Chase.
Increasing tensions between Weill and the chairman of American Express,
James D. Robinson III, led Weill to resign in
August 1985 at age 52.
After a failed attempt to become the CEO of
BankAmerica Corp. (and "take over" Merrill Lynch, according to a Jamie Dimon interview in
2002), he set his sights a little lower and persuaded Minneapolis-based
Control Data Corporation to spin off a troubled subsidiary,
Commercial Credit, a consumer finance company. In
1986, with $7 million of his own money invested in the company, Weill took over as CEO of Commercial Credit. After a round of deep layoffs and reorganization, the company completed a successful
IPO.
In
1987, he acquired Gulf
Insurance. The next year, he paid $1.5 billion for Primerica, the parent company of
Smith Barney and the
A. L. Williams insurance company. In
1989 he acquired
Drexel Burnham Lambert's retail brokerage outlets. In
1992, he paid $722 million to buy a 27 percent share of
Travelers Insurance, which had gotten into trouble because of bad real estate investments.
In
1993 he reacquired his old Shearson brokerage (now
Shearson Lehman) from American Express for $
1.2 billion. By the end of the year, he had completely taken over
Travelers Corp in a $4 billion stock deal and officially began calling his corporation
Travelers Group Inc. In
1996 he added to his holdings, at a cost of $4 billion, the property and casualty operations of
Aetna Life &
Casualty.
In September 1997 Weill acquired Salomon
Inc., the parent company of
Salomon Brothers Inc. for over $9 billion in stock.
In
April 1998,
Travelers Group announced an agreement to undertake the $76 billion merger between Travelers and Citicorp, and the merger was completed on October 8, 1998. The possibility remained that the merger would run into problems connected with federal law.
Ever since the Glass--Steagall Act, banking and insurance businesses had been kept separate. Weill and
John S. Reed bet that
Congress would soon pass legislation overturning those regulations, which Weill, Reed and a number of businesspeople considered not in their interest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Weill