King of Capital: Sandy Weill and the Making of Citigroup »

Amey Stone has ten years’ experience as a financial writer, including seven years with BusinessWeek, two with SmartMoney, and one with Financial Planning magazine. She is currently an associate editor at BusinessWeek Online, where she cowrites the daily "Street Wise" column, and is responsible for writing many of the site’s lead stories on business trends, technology, and the economy.

Mike Brewster is an accomplished writer, editor, and financial services professional. For the past year, he has been editor of LeadersOnline. Prior to taking the position with LeadersOnline, Mike was director of communications at the global consulting firm KPMG, where he worked on projects related to Citicorp, Travelers Insurance, and Smith Barney Mutual Funds–all of which are now part of Citigroup.

The 1998 Travelers-Citicorp merger defied federal law, caused a dramatic CEO power struggle, and changed the landscape of the banking and insurance businesses forever–in other words, just another day at the office for Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill. Financial writers Amey Stone and Mike Brewster recount how a middle-class boy from Brooklyn transformed himself into the consummate corporate deal maker in the riveting King of Capital.

The seeds of the historic Citigroup merger were sown early in Weill’s career. Working in the 1960s and 1970s with an all-star cast that included future New York Observer publisher Arthur Carter, future Broadway mogul Roger Berlind, and future SEC chairman Arthur Levitt Jr., Weill devised a winning blueprint for acquiring companies: buy a struggling firm with a prestigious name on the cheap, adopt its brand name, close under-performing divisions, integrate its operations into the existing infrastructure, and slash costs.

In 1970, Weill’s modest, startup brokerage firm CBWL acquired troubled but venerable Hayden Stone, a firm many times its size. This acquisition set the foundation for the building of Weill’s prize gem, Shearson, named after Stone acquired Shearson Hamill. Ten years and fourteen deals later, Weill sold Shearson to American Express, establishing himself as one of the top chief executives of his era.

Weill, though, could never be content as a "deputy dog" to Amex CEO James Robinson III. He left the company in 1985 and started over–essentially from scratch–as CEO of the struggling Commercial Credit, a modest firm based in Baltimore, Maryland, that in a little over a decade morphed into the Travelers Corporation. In 1998, Weill defied federal regulations by masterminding the merger of Travelers with Citibank. Stone and Brewster explain the sophisticated structure of this conglomerate and how Weill aggressively lobbied Congress and the President to ensure its legality. Stone and Brewster also offer insight into the evolution of Citigroup’s inner circle following a power struggle between Weill and co-CEO John Reed and how Citigroup plans to address the thorny issue of succession as Weill enters his seventies.

Weill’s unprecedented achievements have been tempered by key personal and professional relationships, public defeats, and consumer criticism. However, with the unwavering support of Joan, his wife of more than forty years, Weill remains at the peak of his profession, forever on the lookout for the next megadeal. Discover how a disregard for the impossible and maniacal attention to the bottom line created a financial empire for the incomparable King of Capital.

Publishers Weekly

Weill has become the most daring dealmaker and assembler of companies on the business landscape, write Stone and Brewster in this insightful, occasionally hagiographic career biography of the Wall Street icon. While the authors did interview the Citigroup CEO, most of their primary sources are people who still work for him; thus, comments glorifying Weill abound. Stone (an associate editor at BusinessWeek Online) and Brewster (a former communications director at the global consulting firm KPMG) have compiled a comprehensive history tracing the career of Weill, now 69, through his days as a runner on Wall Street to his present position running one of the world's largest corporations. They tell how he started his own firm and describe his methods of merging his companies with larger firms, praising him as one who has more than redefined the deal'; he has come to embody it. The authors do criticize some of Weill's ideas, albeit gently, such as his unwavering belief that, despite evidence to the contrary, it is easy for a large financial company to cross-sell products. They do not explore, however, where Weill's drive comes from, how he has always wound up on top regardless of how many firms his companies have merged with, or the intricacies of his business strategies. For the past several years, Weill has been rumored to be writing his own book. Until then, this mediocre text will suffice. (June 14) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.