'Sanford I. Weill', commonly known as 'Sandy Weill' (born
March 16 1933) is a banker, financier and philanthropist. He was formerly the
chief executive officer and
chairman of
Citigroup Inc. He served in those positions until
October 1 2003 and
April 18,
2006 respectively.
Personal information
Weill and his wife, the former Joan Mosher, were married on
June 20 1955, and live in
Greenwich, Connecticut. They have two adult children (Marc Weill,
Jessica Weill Bibliowicz) and four grandchildren.
He is a
billionaire, with a
net worth estimated to be $1.9 billion by ''
Forbes Magazine'' (2007). As of December 2004 he held 16,679,677 shares of
Citigroup, Inc. and another 3,109,173 unexercised options.
In 2003 Citigroup repurchased $0.3 billion worth of shares from Mr. Weill. It was reported among the $1.967 billion of "treasury stock acquired" in the Citigroup consolidated statement of changes in stockholders' equity.
Weill received a
Bachelor of Arts in Government degree from
Cornell University in 1955. He served as a Cornell Trustee for many years, and in 1998 he endowed Cornell's
medical school, now known as the
Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College and Graduate School of Medical Sciences.
In May of 2003, he received the Baruch Medal for Business and Civic Leadership, presented by
Baruch College for his work in public education and his accomplishments in business.
He is also currently the Chairman of the
Carnegie Hall Board of Directors and is an avid champion of classical music in the United States.
In June of 2007, he endowed Cornell's Life Science Technology building, which was named for him. As chairman of the Board of Overseers of Weill Cornell Medical College and an emeritus member of the Board of Trustees of Cornell University, Mr. Weill orchestrated a $400 million donation to Cornell, of which he and his wife personally contributed $250 million.
[1]
History
Weill was born in
Brooklyn, New York to two
Polish-
Jewish immigrants. He attended
Peekskill Military Academy in
Peekskill, New York, then enrolled at Cornell where he was active in the
Air Force ROTC and the
Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity. Personal problems led to a delay in graduation, which with reductions in military spending quashed his goal to become a pilot. In 1955 he got his first job on
Wall Street: a runner for
Bear Stearns.
While working at Bear Stearns, Weill became neighbours with
Arthur Carter who was working at
Lehman Brothers. In 1956, he became a licensed broker at Bear Stearns. Rather than making phone calls or personal visits to solicit clients, Sandy 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.
In May 1960, Arthur Carter,
Roger Berlind,
Peter Potoma, and Weill formed
Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill. In 1962 the firm became
Carter, Berlind & Weill after the
New York Stock Exchange brought disciplinary proceedings against Potoma. In 1968 the firm became
Cogan, Berlind, Weill & Levitt (
Marshall Cogan,
Arthur Levitt), or CBWL (jokingly, Wall Street called them ''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 totalling $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 found 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, in 1984. Increasingly nettled by his forced subservience to the chairman of the company,
James D. Robinson III, whose ideas about the business conflicted sharply with his, Weill realised that he would never be named CEO. He resigned in August 1985, at the age of 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 cost cuts and reorganisation, the company performed a successful
IPO.
In 1987 he acquired
Gulf Insurance. The next year, 1988, 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 Reed bet that
Congress would soon pass
legislation overturning those regulations, which Weill and Reed and many other businesspeople considered obsolete. To speed up the process, they recruited ex-President Gerald Ford (Republican) to the Board of Directors and Robert Rubin (Secretary of Treasury during Democratic Clinton Administration) whom Weill was close to. With both Democrats and Republican on their side, the law was taken down in less than 2 years. (Many
European countries, for instance, had already torn down the firewall between
banking and
insurance.) During a two-to-five-year
grace period allowed by law, Citigroup could conduct business in its merged form; should that period have elapsed without a change in the law, Citigroup would have had to spin off its insurance businesses.
In November 1998
Jamie Dimon was forced to resign from Citigroup.
In 2001, Sanford A. Weill became a Class A Director of the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Class A Directors are Board Members who are elected by Member Banks (of the
Federal Reserve System) to represent the interests of Member Banks. (See article on
Federal Reserve Bank Board Membership).
In 2002 the company was hit by the wave of "scandals" that followed the
stock market downturn of 2002.
Chuck Prince replaced Mr. Weill as the
CEO of
Citigroup on
October 1 2003.
Conference calls
★
20 October 2003 - 2003 Third Quarter Earnings Review (
slides) (
audio) (his last conference call, the audio recording is no longer available)
External links
Biographies
★
Citigroup biography
★
Forbes Worlds richest 2005
★
Sandy Weill
Articles
★ HW Wilson:
Today's Profile - 1999
★ ''
The Banker'': "
Is Sandy losing focus?,"
September 2 2002.
★
Knowledge at Wharton
★ Norris, Floyd. "
Citigroup's Climb to Riches, One Merger at a Time with Sanford I. Weill," ''New York Times'',
July 17 2003.
★ ''Wharton Journal'': "
Sandy Weill Sits Down With the WJ,"
September 22 2003.
★ "
Sandy's Story," ''TIME'',
March 24 2003.
Videos
★
WSJ Nov. 9 - 05
Books
Tearing down the walls
Langley, Monica. ''Tearing Down the Walls'' ISBN 0-7432-4726-4, The Free Press, New York, 2004.
★
WSJ Books Review
★
Simonsays.com excerpt of Chapter 1: "Crashing the Gates"
King of capital
★
Barnes & Noble.com - King of Capital: Sandy Weill and the Making of Citigroup - May 2002
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/nyregion/13hospital.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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