Weill, Sandy

▪ 1999

      When the proposed merger of the Travelers Group financial giant and banking's Citicorp was announced in April 1998, the news stunned the financial industry; involving some $76 billion in stock, it was at the time the largest merger in history. For Wall Street's latest superstar, Travelers chairman and CEO Sanford "Sandy" Weill, not only was the merger a step closer to the creation of the huge international diversified financial services institution he had been dreaming about for over a decade, but its audacity and risk was in step with Weill's reputation as a corporate visionary who was as savvy as he was fearless.

      Weill was born March 16, 1933, in Brooklyn, N.Y., to Polish immigrants and was the first in his family to earn a university degree, graduating from Cornell in 1955. Afterward, he worked his way up from Wall Street messenger to stockbroker to cofounder of a firm in 1960. During the next two decades Weill aggressively bought securities houses and amassed his first financial services network, Shearson Loeb Rhoades. His steady rise came to a halt, however, in the 1980s, when he sold Shearson to American Express. At the time of the sale Weill had hoped to become chief executive of American Express, but in 1985 he left the company.

      At that time, in his 50s and financially secure, Weill would not have been begrudged his retirement. Instead he started over, buying the Commercial Credit division of Control Data Corp. in 1986. It was not an auspicious rebirth of an empire—the small division was a faltering reject of its parent company. Weill, however, displayed a talent for rebuilding such organizations through cost cutting and employee motivation, and two years later he was expanding again, merging Commercial Credit with the larger, but struggling, Primerica, and acquiring the securities firm Smith Barney in the process. The acquisition of Travelers and the repurchase of Shearson from American Express followed during 1992-93.

      In October 1997 Weill gained widespread attention for the $9 billion purchase of Salomon Inc., parent company of the prestigious Salomon Brothers investment bank. It was at the time the second-largest acquisition in Wall Street history. But even as Weill's comeback was hailed on Wall Street, his dream was far from complete. Driven either by ego or vision, or perhaps both, he still sought the greater size and diversity that the merger with Citicorp would bring. As Weill awaited approval of the deal, which faced the problem of banking regulation laws that prohibit a bank from selling insurance, the worldwide financial industry waited to see if he had again grabbed too much too fast, or if he would now finally see his grand vision become a reality.

LOCKE PETERSEIM

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