Sanford I. Weill
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Sandy Weill (born March 16 1933) is a financier, philanthropist, and chairman of Citigroup. He is one of the richest men in the United States.
He retired his position as CEO of Citigroup on October 1, 2003. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Government degree from Cornell University in 1955. 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 Bibliowicz) and four grandchildren.
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Personal finance
His net worth is estimated to $1.5 billion by Forbes Magazine (2004). He holds 16,679,677 shares of Citigroup, Inc ([1] (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=C)) to a value of $740 million.
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.
History
Weill got his first job on Wall Street in 1955 at Bear Stearns. While working at Bear Stearns, Weill became neigbours 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 Securities and Exchange Commission. For weeks his only client was his mother, Etta. Joan, who knew very well Sandy's tendency to avoid public contact, managed to double his clientèle one weekend when they ran across one of her old boyfriends, Michael Weinberg, at the beach and Joan persuaded him to let Sandy sign him up for a brokerage account. She began calling Sandy at the office each day, sometimes several times a day, to warn him to "get off your duff and make some calls."
In May 1960 Arthur Carter, Roger Berlind, Peter Potoma, and Mr. Weill formed Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill. In 1962 the firm became Carter, Berlind & Weill after the New York Stock Exchange brings disciplinary proceedings against Potoma. In 1968 the firm became Cogan, Berlind, Weill & Levitt (Marshall Cogan, Arthur Levitt). In those days, they were called CBWL. 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.) 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 3d, 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 buy out BankAmerica Corp. (and "take over" Merrill Lynch, according to Jamie Dimon interview in 2002), he set his sights a little lower and persuaded Minneapolis-based Control Data Corp. 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. 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 the 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, the merger was completed on October 8, 1998. The possibility was that the merger would run into problems connected with federal law. Ever since the Glass-Steagall Act banking and insurance businesses have been kept separate. Weill and Reed were betting that Congress would soon pass legislation overturning those regulations, which Weill and Reed and many other businesspeople considered obsolete. (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 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
- 10/20/2003 - 2003 Third Quarter Earnings Review (slides (http://www.citigroup.com/citigroup/fin/data/rev3q03.pdf)) (audio (http://video.vdat.com/playfile.asp?brand=VN&file=26483_27342.asf&stream=w&media=a)) (his last conference call, the audio recording is no longer available)
See also
External links
Biographies
- Citigroup Office of the Chairman (http://www.citigroup.com/citigroup/corporategovernance/chairmanoffice.htm)
- Citigroup - Sanford I. Weill (http://www.citigroup.com/citigroup/corporate/businessheads/weill.htm)
- Forbes 400 2004 listing (http://www.forbes.com/finance/lists/54/2004/LIR.jhtml?passListId=54&passYear=2004&passListType=Person&uniqueId=HRFZ&datatype=Person)
- Forbes Worlds richest 2005 (http://www.forbes.com/static/bill2005/LIRHRFZ.html?passListId=10&passYear=2005&passListType=Person&uniqueId=HRFZ&datatype=Person)
Articles
- Today's Profile - 1999 (http://wilsontxt.hwwilson.com/cbimages/1983/024/262/p1.htm)
- The Banker: Is Sandy losing focus? - 02 September, 2002 (http://www.thebanker.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/227/Is_Sandy_losing_focus__.html)
- Knowledge at Wharton (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/073102_ss1.html)
- Academy of Achievement: Sanford I. Weill Interview - May 23, 1997 (http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/wei0int-1)
- Citigroup's Climb to Riches, One Merger at a Time with Sanford I. Weill - FLOYD NORRIS / NY Times - Jul 17 2003 (http://www.mindfully.org/Industry/2003/Citigroup-Riches-Weill17jul03.htm)
- Chief Executive, The: The dealmaker: Sandy Weill may shout more ... (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4070/is_2002_July/ai_89394652)
- Sandy Weill Sits Down With the WJ - Wharton Journal - News (http://www.whartonjournal.com/news/2003/09/22/News/Sandy.Weill.Sits.Down.With.The.Wj-471365.shtml)
- TIME.com: Sandy's Story -- Mar. 24, 2003 (http://www.time.com/time/globalbusiness/article/0,9171,1101030324-433269,00.html)
- Stop Sandford Weill's corruption (http://www.karmabanque.com)
Books
Tearing down the walls
- Barnes & Noble.com - Tearing Down the Walls - 2004 (http://btobsearch.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?userid=z0s1dmHsfA&sourceid=00395996645644787198&btob=Y&ean=9780743247269&displayonly=EXC)
- WSJ Books - Tearing Down the Walls by Monica Langley (http://wsjbooks.com/tearwall-intro.htm)
- Simonsays.com > SimonSays > Tearing Down the Walls: How Sandy ... - Chapter 1: Crashing the Gates (http://www.simonsays.com/content/content.cfm?sid=33&pid=422960&agid=2)
- Amazon.com: Excerpt from Tearing Down the Walls: How Sandy Weill ... (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000094B4O/103-8743771-5024604?v=glance&vi=excerpt)
King of capital
- Barnes & Noble.com - King of Capital: Sandy Weill and the Making of Citigroup - May 2002 (http://btobsearch.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?sourceid=00395996645644787198&btob=Y&ean=9780471214168&pwb=1&displayonly=EXC)