Booknotes

MONICA LANGLEY, AUTHOR, "TEARING DOWN THE WALLS" Because the subject of the book, Sandy Weill, has spent his entire life in the financial industry tearing down walls. He started on Wall Street. It was run like a club, more than a business, and he had to break down barriers to even get onto Wall Street. And then when he made his biggest acquisition of Citicorp and created Citigroup, the world`s largest financial empire, he tore down the Glass-Steagall and all the banking laws, in effect, to put together this monster.

LANGLEY: He`s a larger-than-life figure. He is -- he started from nowhere, and today, as you know, he`s the most important financial CEO in the world. President Bush calls him to ask what he sees in the economy. Robert Rubin, the former treasury secretary, works for him. But at the beginning, he was the person least likely to succeed, which is what`s so fascinating. And you still see that insecurity and worry and fear and loving accolades even today, now that he`s a billionaire.

LANGLEY: Gerald Ford was his first trophy director. When Sandy first made his first empire, called Shearson, he got Gerald Ford, after he was out of the presidency, to be a director. And they have become friends for 20 years, and Gerald Ford has become rich by holding the stock in Sandy`s companies. And he`s very appreciative to Sandy for that.

LANGLEY: You know, that was a major coup. As you know, everybody wanted Bob Rubin when he came out of the Clinton administration. And Sandy was Sandy. He can be a salesman, from when he was selling little stocks as a young man on Wall Street, to today. He wooed Rubin, calling him every day, meeting with him every day for 30 days, and finally got Rubin to join on.

LANGLEY: Right. Linda Gosden Robinson.

LANGLEY: It`s a great story between Jim Robinson and Sandy Weill. Jim Robinson is a patrician, chairman of American Express. He brought in Sandy when he bought Shearson, and they were the exact opposites, and they could not get along. And ultimately, Jim Robinson won out over Sandy Weill over who would control American Express, and it was Sandy`s most public defeat in his career. But today they`re friendly.

LANGLEY: Don`t burn bridges.

LANGLEY: That`s right, Prince...

LANGLEY: ... al Waleed, Prince al Waleed of Saudi Arabia. He holds about 5 percent of Citigroup. He`s obviously one of the richest men in the world. And he bought Citicorp stock originally in the `90s, when the company was on its knees and being practically run by the Fed. And today it`s, you know, skyrocketed. And when Sandy went to visit him in the Saudi desert, he was trying to win a spot over John Reed to take over Citigroup, once the men merged Travelers and Citicorp. Kind of drawn out, but he`s an important figure.

LANGLEY: Exactly.

LANGLEY: Right. Bensonhurst.

LANGLEY: You know, it`s really interesting to look back in the 1950s. It was a very WASPy place, although there were some Jewish firms, like Goldman Sachs and others, but believe it or not, those firms tended to look down upon Eastern European Jews and were more German Jewish. So Sandy is the son of Polish immigrants, and so he was kind of the wrong kind of Jew. But his whole life has been a lot of class struggle, not just Jewish but coming from -- having no connections, no polish, you know, and he`s kind of had to have these class struggles through his whole life.

LANGLEY: Interesting. Jesse Jackson and he are very close friends today. Jesse Jackson initially was going to oppose one of Sandy`s acquisitions in the early `90s, and they met. And at that point, they bonded over their shared discrimination that they had felt growing up because Sandy felt discriminated against, to some degree. Jesse Jackson did, and was a Civil Rights leader. And so the two of them bonded over several years and helped each other. It was a classic case of "You scratch my back, I`ll scratch yours." Jesse Jackson was able to start the Wall Street Project to move his Rainbow/PUSH coalition to New York with Sandy`s Help. So he wanted to try to push to get more minorities onto Wall Street. And then Sandy, in return, got backing of a huge Civil Rights leader. When he wanted to get President Clinton and Congress to change the banking laws to allow his huge $83 billion merger in 1998, Jesse Jackson turned out to be an important ally.

LANGLEY: Well, Sandy has -- Sandy and Citigroup have backed Jesse Jackson`s Wall Street Project. So you know, I mean, there`s been -- I mean, Sandy does have the ability to -- I mean, a billionaire`s company is the most profitable one in the world, so he has helped Jesse Jackson with his causes financially.

LANGLEY: You know, I think that Sandy`s life tells the story of Wall Street and the financial industry for the last 50 years. And broader than that, though, it also tells the story of American society because, as you see the moves he`s making in business, you also see American society changing. There`s some things in there about how he tried to help Carnegie Hall, and he was using that also to break into the so-called "white glove society" in New York. You know, from -- he was new money versus old money. So you will see things about American history and just the pure power of a personality and how that person has changed financial services and New York society.

LANGLEY: He was a director, and he -- you know, he and Sandy are not really close. However, he came on the board when Sandy bought Travelers, so they got to know each other then. And he is the one who advised Sandy when Sandy was taking over Travelers, Get out of the health care business. It`s going to be full of politics. Hillary Clinton is coming on the scene. So he was instrumental in having Sandy get out of what turned out to be a very troubled business.

LANGLEY: Yes. Sandy, as you will see, he expects loyalty, but sometimes he`s not always as loyal to the people, you know, who work for him or with him. And Joe Califano took it nicely, though, when he laid him off the board. You know, he said, OK, I`ve done well with this company. I understand. Other directors who were long-time friends didn`t like Sandy shoving them aside as he was moving up the ladder.

LANGLEY: Yes. Yes. He -- you know what? He was the one who Sandy first hired in the 1960s and the early `70s to set up a back office, which turned out to be Sandy`s ticket to success on Wall Street because Sandy was never able to walk in the front door because Wall Street wouldn`t let him in to schmooze with the brokers, and he had no contacts. So he had to go in the back door and work in the back office. He started as a runner at Bear Stearns in the 1950s, even though he had a college degree. And he learned the back office. And so then when he got control of a little firm, a two-office firm that he started with three others -- Arthur Levitt being one of them -- he knew he needed to set up a back office, and he brought in Frank Zarb. And they always joked that they were nobodies and they ended up doing very well financially. And Frank Zarb appears in and out through this book in several of Sandy`s companies.

LANGLEY: He is -- was a loyalist to John Reed. He was on the Citicorp board. And in 1998, Sandy proposed to John Reed in a hotel room here in D.C., when they were here for a business council meeting, Let`s merge our two companies, which was a totally audacious, unbelievable idea. John Deutsch was on the board of Citicorp, and when John Reed and Sandy Weill ultimately fought with each other over who would control Citigroup in the year 2000, John Deutsch was a supporter of John Reed. But Sandy won.

LANGLEY: Yes, that one.

LANGLEY: He`s very happy out of the company. I mean, he lost a bruising battle to Sandy. There was a boardroom showdown in 2000, and he lost. He thought that Sandy had promised the two of them would merge their companies and leave together. John Reed was ready to retire and Sandy wasn`t. Sandy outmaneuvered him the entire time. John Reed today has a house in the south of France, and he teaches some and speaks, and he`s very happy. He sold Citigroup stock when it was very high, and he`s a happy man not worrying with the latest stock gyrations and what the market expects Citi to do.

LANGLEY: Sandy just turned 70 March 16th.

LANGLEY: He`s chairman and CEO of Citigroup, and he has no intention of giving it up any time soon. When most men would be -- or women at the heads of corporations would be going to their golf course, he is committed to stay there until he basically salvages his reputation and Citigroup after the bruising fall this past year they`ve had with the Wall Street scandals.

LANGLEY: Citigroup has a trillion dollars in assets. It`s a market capitalization of nearly $200 billion. It is one of the top five largest companies -- U.S. companies and the biggest financial conglomerate in the world.

LANGLEY: It`s based in New York City, on Park Avenue, and -- but it is in 100 countries. I mean, it is truly -- it`s -- and Sandy wants to make it -- make it what a McDonald`s or a Coke is all over the world, so it stands for financial services.

LANGLEY: What does it own? A lot. Apart from Citibank, which you`ll see on -- it`s not everywhere, but you see it on every street corner in New York City. And also, it did own Travelers, and recently divested Travelers, which was a big insurance company. It also owns Citicards (ph). Did you know that 20 percent or 25 percent of all credit cards are from Citibank in this country? So a lot of people watching probably have a Citicard. It owns Citifinancial (ph), which makes consumer loans. They`ve obviously named everything "Citi" these days. And then they have something called PFS, which are independent insurance agents that sell to the middle class.

So what they -- what Sandy`s vision has been for a couple decades is to create a financial empire that hits every market and provides you every service -- his famous "cross selling."

LANGLEY: He has an apartment in Manhattan on 5th Avenue. He has a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. And then he has a weekend place in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. And he`s just completing a -- like, a lavish yacht that -- he sold on yacht and he`s getting a bigger yacht.

LANGLEY: He has two children, a son, Mark (ph), and a daughter, Jessica (ph). They`re both in their 40s, and they have both worked in and out of their father`s companies to some controversy over the years. Sandy used to say he was in favor of nepotism. Today he`ll tell you he`s not.

LANGLEY: Yes.

LANGLEY: Jamie Dimon was Sandy`s heir apparent, and almost like a son to him. He was the alter ego, and he had started as an assistant straight out of Harvard Business School with Sandy Weill. They had -- they built Citigroup together. Sandy really wanted to promote Jessica. She is the apple of his eye, and she`s a very savvy marketer. She wanted to head up all of the mutual funds and investment management, and Jamie did not think she was ready for the job and didn`t think she should do it. He thought she should go out in the field and get some experience. And when Jamie refused to do that and Jessica left the company, Sandy and Jamie`s relationship was never the same. And Jamie ultimately was gone.

LANGLEY: I first met him three or four years ago, when I wrote a page-one article for "The Wall Street Journal" on him. And then on this book, I spent about two-and-a-half years on it, and I would see Sandy at least once a month. But this is not his authorized biography. It`s an independent project. So I interviewed 500 people, but clearly, I wanted it to resonate with who Sandy -- you know, resonate with Sandy and so people would recognize him. So I tried to spend as much time as he would allow, although he went back and forth with me because he couldn`t control the project. So sometimes he`d feel like cooperating and sometimes he wouldn`t. But I stayed ahead and ultimately got unprecedented access within Citi.

LANGLEY: I won`t say. I mean, some people are acknowledged as sources, you know, but a lot of people didn`t want to be acknowledged as sources, although everyone knew I would be describing it and writing it as a narrative, you know, to say what they were doing, thinking, talking. So you probably can see, and there`s some people in the back I thank for being critical sources.

LANGLEY: OK.

LANGLEY: Yes.

LANGLEY: Yes, Peter Cohen...

LANGLEY: ... who was his deputy in building his first empire. And that was when Sandy was trying to get ahead and get some position at American Express. He was the president without a portfolio, and Jim Robinson, the CEO, was basically running things and had the board locked up. So this really kind of shows you the behind-the-scenes stuff that you see. You think big business is decided by looking at the bottom line or a ledger, and they`re sitting here having a fight, like brothers, about, You`re not loyal to me, you SOB.

And you know, Sandy really expected him to slit his wrists. At one point, in another scene in the book, the executives go off, and they`re all fighting with each other. And some of them go in the kitchen and actually slice their fingers and, you know, have, like, a blood oath that they`re going to be together. So Sandy takes everything personally. That`s one of his strengths and one of his weaknesses.

LANGLEY: Yes.

LANGLEY: Yes. Well...

LANGLEY: Well, if there were people in -- I mean, I acknowledge in the book that, you know, I talked to both Sandy and Peter Cohen. And so I would obviously try to run anything by them and make sure that it`s accurate. Also, there were people who would have heard that in a meeting or at the bar. I don`t remember exactly which one that was. But there could be other people who heard it at the time or were told it immediately after.

And you know that I did reconstruct dialogue in the book to try to make it real, so you feel like you`re there. And I did it in a painstaking fashion of trying to check it with the people who were there in the room, who were participants, or who were told immediately thereafter about it, to make it as -- as real as I possibly could. I mean, there`s always chances there could be a word or two wrong or whatever, but I did reconstruct dialogue and tried to do it with a huge amount of accuracy.

LANGLEY: Yes.

LANGLEY: He loves his planes!

LANGLEY: How often? You know, he uses it whenever it`s convenient. I mean, if he wants to bop down to Washington, he`ll take the helicopter. Or if he wants to go -- when he was at Travelers, and then he would want to go stop in Greenwich or back to Manhattan, he would use it. I mean, he uses whatever is convenient. He adores, however, his Gulfstream -- it was a G-4, I guess now it`s a G-5 -- his jet, the luxury jet. And you know, in one part, when he was trying to buy Smith Barney, he didn`t like that the seller of Smith Barney had these golden parachutes. But if he was going to give up the golden parachutes, by God, he wanted that Gulfstream that was on order you know?

So you can see -- Sandy loves his perks, and you see that throughout, that he can be -- I mean, he`s like a -- slice you up, cut costs everywhere. You know, when he took over one company, he took out the coffee pots. He made them water their own plants. And then he goes to these elaborate dinners at night, where there`s, you know, four different kinds of wine, six courses. You know, so he -- I mean, he would argue that his perks help him do business and develop the camaraderie with the senior management or with the clients or the people he`s doing deals with.

LANGLEY: That is almost a character in and of itself in the book. There`s a couple places that are real characters. One is Carnegie Hall, and I think the other is the Four Seasons restaurant. It is the scene of the true power lunch. You know, the origination of the power lunch was with the Four Seasons restaurant. And Sandy goes there because he loves to see and be seen. And when he was ousted from American Express and was in corporate exile for a year-and-a-half, he took an office in the building that the Four Seasons restaurant is in so he wouldn`t feel out of the action, so he could go down and have a big lunch and have his two martinis. And he would see the power players, and he would be one.

LANGLEY: Isaac Stern.

LANGLEY: You know, he had started -- when he was with American Express, you know, that gave him an imprimatur of the establishment. And so he went on the Carnegie Hall board at the time. And then when he was out of American Express, he was afraid that Carnegie Hall wouldn`t want him any more. He didn`t have a position. He so identified with his company that he never thought he was worthy in and of himself.

So he was -- he got a phone call from Isaac Stern, and he thought, Oh, my God. He`s getting ready to ask me to leave the board. So he volunteered, I`ll leave the board. And Isaac Stern said, No, I`m calling - - you know, he`s the famed violinist. And Isaac Stern said, No, I`m calling to tell you we want you more than ever. And actually, Carnegie Hall turned out to be Sandy`s salvation when he was in corporate exile in the mid-`80s because it allowed him -- he was raising funds for Carnegie Hall, but he got to go out and see people and talk to the powers that be to try to get their money, and it gave him something to do because he literally was sitting there, watching a Quotron for a year-and-a-half, trying to do deals, and nothing was happening.

LANGLEY: Yes.

LANGLEY: Yes, Alison Falls was his assistant, and Jamie Dimon was his -- they were both assistants but different capacities.

LANGLEY: Jamie Dimon today is the chairman and CEO of Bank One in Chicago, the nation`s fifth or sixth largest bank. And he got that job after being in corporate exile himself, when Sandy fired him in 1998. After finally making the big deal and buying Citicorp, Sandy fired Jamie in what was a very gut-wrenching incident within the company because everybody viewed them so together. And then Jamie -- it took him a year or so to pick a job and get the right job, and he`s now in Chicago. And people today think he wants to make a Wall Street play so badly, you know, to compete against Citi or -- and Sandy, or they -- some people are quietly hoping that one day he`ll come back and run Citi when Sandy finally exits.

LANGLEY: Oh...

LANGLEY: There`s a stream of names. For one thing, Frank Zarb you talked about. At one point, he kicked Frank Zarb out to bring in Bob Greenhill, who didn`t work out, a big star investment banker. He basically pushed aside Peter Cohen, didn`t technically fire him, but basically pushed him aside. Then you can go, you know, John Reed, who he`s promised a, you know, great marriage at Citigroup. Ultimately, he pushed him out -- Jamie Dimon. Those were the most obvious names, but it`s happened a lot, whether it`s a director or someone who worked for him. I mean, people realize, suddenly, they say, you know, you`re not getting phone calls from Sandy. He`s not returned your call. You realize you`re on your way out, and some people just decide to go. Or sometimes he fires them.

LANGLEY: Yes, I think that`s true. And I think that that -- Sandy uses that to his advantage because he wants them to feel on their toes and feel like they`ve got to perform for him. He pushes people in the most dramatic fashion. I mean, they are -- I was calling people in reporting this book, they were in their office at 5:00 o`clock in the morning. These are people that are multi-millionaires at -- or at 6:00 o`clock in the morning, multi-millionaires running huge empires within Citigroup. And he uses that to advantage to make them want to perform the best as they possibly can.

And there is a thing about Sandy. Even though he can be a big bully and can be vicious, he also can be charming and have a really sweet side to him, believe it or not. And as a writer working on this book, I felt both sides of his personality myself.

LANGLEY: Sandy said that.

LANGLEY: You know, American Express -- I called the chapter in the Book "In the WASP Nest." It truly was a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant empire, and the board was very much the Palm Beach, you know, private club set. And so you could -- the defense were so stark between Sandy and his team -- you know, like Franz Zarb and Peter Cohen all started with nothing versus the button-down guys who came from privilege. You know, Jim Robinson was the third or four-line banker from Atlanta. His family was very well known.

So I don`t know what provoked Sandy to say that, but he used class struggle to his advantage all the time. You know, if it weren`t -- if it weren`t Jew versus WASP in -- not that he was doing it overtly -- you know, it would be things like the rich versus poor or entrepreneur versus establishment. He felt very entrepreneurial going into American Express, and they were very establishment. And they wanted to send memos, and he -- he doesn`t read memos, and so he wasn`t performing the American Express way. You know, so a lot of these things he uses to his advantage, and they`ve been powerful motivators to him.

LANGLEY: Yes. That is the -- that`s one of the endearing qualities. He can be a really tough guy that you don`t want to cross, and then he has so much emotion that, you know, when he sold Shearson and he wanted to -- he announced to his company that he had built from nothing, he broke down and cried. There are a few times, as you say, in the book where he does break down and cry.

He told me when he read the last chapter of this book, he broke down and cried. So he`s -- he is an emotional guy. You know if he`s mad, and you know if he`s happy.

LANGLEY: Mixed. His first reaction was -- he had it -- he wanted to -- you know, he`s a control freak. All these people in powerful positions are. And he first wanted to -- when he couldn`t control the book, then he wanted the galleys when it was written. I wouldn`t give him the galleys. Then he wanted, like, the first copy. He kept calling me right before it came out, and I said no. Finally, I said, I will give you one of the first copies that I get off the presses. You know, you are the subject of the book. I`ll do that.

So he was at a senior management retreat. You know, he likes to go on these retreats. He was down in the Bahamas. He had a car, a driver come to my house at 7:00 o`clock on Friday morning -- on a Friday morning in February two weeks before the book came out -- I had just gotten my copies -- to pick it up and put it on the Gulfstream jet -- they were flying down spouses and a couple other executives -- so he and a couple of his key people could read it over the weekend.

I -- they came back after the weekend. I heard it was more popular than a golf game. People were canceling their golf matches. And I talked to him and several others, and his reaction -- he said, It`d be a great read if it weren`t about me. But there`s a lot of things he doesn`t like in it, and...

LANGLEY: OK. He doesn`t like some of the points that I make about the class struggle. You know, I mean, he really doesn`t like seeing that all laid out, or some of the personal idiosyncracies of his, of, like, you know, that when he was in exile and I have him sleeping on the couch at the -- in his office above the Four Seasons, and he was drinking and eating a lot. And I have him sleeping on the couch with the tufted leather couch on his cheek and, you know, saliva running out his mouth. He went, Why do you have to put that? You know, he doesn`t like some of those things, and I told him, I had to bring you to life. I felt my mission in writing this book was to -- even though this is the world`s largest financial empire, is to show what one man does. Like him or hate him, you`ll see what he does, and I wanted to bring him to life. And I had to bring out his humanness, to me, to make it readable to my family in Tennessee or to, you know, the canyons of Wall Street.

LANGLEY: He loves to be seen, see each -- see the people, feel part of them. He always -- I mean, for a while there, he was in "The New York Times" society page, like, every other week. If there was an honor to be given in the last few years, he wanted it.

LANGLEY: That is CEO of the Year award, and you know, people that preceded him were Michael Dell, Jack Welch, you know, big heavy hitters. And it`s not just the financial services, it`s CEO of the Year. That meant a lot to him. He wanted that for the last few years, and he was afraid he wasn`t going to get it. And when they called him to tell him that he was going to get CEO of the Year, he started shivering, he was so excited. And here`s this man -- this was just this past summer, and he was so excited, he`s shivering. He flies in his mother-in-law from California, who never wanted Joan to marry Sandy, never wanted her daughter to marry him. And it was a very big deal. Of course, as you know, in the book, that very night that he`s getting the honor he had coveted for so long, his whole crisis, his whole career is breaking in front of him that exact same day.

LANGLEY: That is the testimony on Capitol Hill of Jack Grubman, who was his $20 million-a-year telecom analyst. And Jack Grubman was testifying -- you know, Enron, WorldCom- these had gone bankrupt or were scandal-ridden. And Citigroup, Salomon Smith Barney -- that`s another thing I should have mentioned earlier, that he owns -- Salomon Smith Barney was the key banker for these institutions, and Grubman was the analyst and the banker on the transactions. So Grubman was hauled into Washington to testify about his involvement.

So Sandy is sitting on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, about to win this award. You know, everybody`s chattering. It`s cocktail hour. It`s a beautiful black-tie gala. And on the TV screens on the New York Stock Exchange floor, they keep airing the congressional testimony of Grubman. So Sandy is sitting there, about to win the biggest award, and he can`t help but notice over his shoulder are the TV screens where Jack Grubman is saying -- they said, Did you favor big clients over small investors?

And you know, Sandy`s rise had come through smaller investors. They said, Did you favor big clients, you know, the big cats instead of the small investor? And Jack Grubman is, like, I don`t know. I don`t know if I did that. Maybe. You know, it was a very evasive, dismal performance. And Sandy literally broke out in a sweat at -- that night, as this was going on.

LANGLEY: Citi is -- it`s not final yet, but they negotiated in December that the $1.3 billion settlement for all the securities industry, and Citigroup will pay the largest amount, $400 million, in fine and other restitution.

LANGLEY: Yes.

LANGLEY: Right.

LANGLEY: You know, because it really showed him going back to, like, his core of having to be -- you know, for the last few years, he`s been, like, a globe-trotter. You know, I mean, that`s one of the other things that he loves is getting a big reputation and going and learning about China -- I mean, a kid from Brooklyn now doing all this stuff. And he -- he had to -- with this crisis going -- and the stock of Citigroup plummeted, I mean, 40 percent, just in, you know, a three-month period. It lost a whopping $100 billion in market value. That`s a lot.

And so suddenly, he was on the fence. He was having to defend his reputation and his company. And he kind of went back to the core. He had gotten fat and happy, kind of. He lost 30 pounds. I call it the Spitzer diet, named after Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general. And he started reading everything again -- not reading so much, but talking about everything, wanting to check everything. And at the end, when it`s finally over and the initial settlement is announced, he says, Let`s go back to work. And it`s, like, I`ve got to do it all over again. You know, Here I am, having to prove my critics wrong again.

And I think what he was emotional about was there`s a scene near the end where his top -- top management is at a gathering, one of their retreats, in California, and Sandy speaks, Look, we`ve screwed up. We`ve got to do better. We`ve got to get back on course -- because they were going for every part of the business -- And we got to step back, look what`s best for Wall Street, not just for our bottom line.

And when he finishes talking, he walks into the crowd, and they all rush and basically circle him, and he disappears in the crowd. And that was an emotional thing for him, and I guess reading it made him feel emotional again.

LANGLEY: Well, for one thing -- that`s the thing. They -- this is what I found out, Brian. It`s not -- it`s not an easy thing with Sandy. You don`t love him or hate him. Even the people that are his best friends strongly dislike certain things about him. Even people who hate him admire certain qualities of his. So a lot of these key executives feel strongly that he is leading them, you know, to greatness. I mean, the company is a great company.

At the same time, they`ll all getting very rich. One person said to me, You know, you hate it the whole time you`re getting wealthy. I mean, these people all have stock options. Sandy was one of the first believers in stock options back in the `80s, and -- so people who have stuck with him, you know, from -- even secretaries to a chauffeur can be a millionaire in his empire if they`ve stuck with him from the beginning.

LANGLEY: Right.

LANGLEY: That`s right.

LANGLEY: Well, that`s -- that`s interesting because Rubin did not want to go and be a hands-on manager again. You know, he had run Goldman Sachs before he went to be the treasury secretary. He was such a big get. You know, Rubin was so highly sought after, and he gives so much cachet to any company who got him, they`re willing to give him a very lucrative package. He does bring things to the table, though. I mean, Citigroup last year bought Banamex (ph), one of the two largest banking empires in Mexico. And that was done because the Mexican banker called Bob Rubin and said, I`m thinking about maybe wanting to sell our bank. And so Sandy and Rubin got on a helicopter, flew down to Mexico City, got on a helicopter and went to a hacienda in Mexico and worked out a deal in 24 hours to buy this huge banking institution in Mexico, which is going to be key with the cross-country between Mexico and the United States.

LANGLEY: Oh, that was clearly part of it because he helped negotiate, you know, Mexico during its financial crisis.

LANGLEY: You know, no, I don`t know the total amount that he made, but he -- I did meet with Gerald Ford in the presidential suite at the Waldorf Hotel, when he was in for a board meeting with Citigroup, to interview him for the book. And he did tell me that he has set up trusts for his family and things for -- from Citigroup stock. And he`s very appreciative because, as you know, a lifelong politician like Ford would not have that much wealth. So he`s done well. I can`t quantify it, though. I don`t...

LANGLEY: Oh, my gosh. Well, he used him as his trophy. I mean, he would trot him out, and he gave him the kind of credibility that he really hadn`t had. You know, when he was ousted from American Express, he basically had to start over. And Gerald Ford was one of his first big board members when then he acquired this dinky consumer finance company called Commercial Credit in Baltimore. He first put Ford on Shearson in 1980, and then he brought him back to be on the board in 1986, when he bought another company. So Ford helped him just in the credibility. And Sandy would work him, you know, having him go to companies and talk to brokers and clients and things like that. So he did have a role, and it was mostly -- now, I do know, in some board meetings, he would ask Ford, at the dinner the night before a board meeting, What`s your opinion on what`s happening, you know, in politics and government, things like that. So he would ask questions.

LANGLEY: This year, he just had a -- "just" -- a million-dollar -- he took a million-dollar salary, and he refused a bonus because the stock did so poorly. But a couple years ago, he made over $200 million, if you count his -- his salary, his bonus and the exercise of his stock options.

LANGLEY: He is worth -- he was worth more before the Wall Street crisis happened last fall. He was getting close to $2 billion. Now he`s in the billion-plus range. That`s his worth, based on Citigroup stock. And most of his wealth is tied up in Citigroup stock, which is why he says he`s not like, you know, some of these people who cashed out of their companies right before they went down. He -- his wealth is integrally involved with how well the company does or doesn`t do.

LANGLEY: I called Joan the most important merger of his career, and that`s pretty significant because he`s probably done hundreds of mergers, big and small. She was the one who believed in him when no one would. Her parents didn`t want her to marry him when they met in their early 20s. And they married early in life, and she has stuck with him, and she is the ultimate corporate wife. You know, we`ve seen a lot of them over years, and she truly is. She has stayed with him through thick and thin and bucks him up when he -- when he is really down. And she also gives him, I found out, a lot of savvy advice, particularly about people he should trust or not trust. So executives tell me she`s very much a power behind the scenes.

LANGLEY: Over a dozen years. I started with "The Journal" in `83, after I got out of Georgetown Law School, and was with "The Journal" until `89, and then left to go practice law, to try that for a few years. And I rejoined "The Journal" in `96.

LANGLEY: Well, you know, I`d just covered the `88 presidential campaign, which is grueling, and I had just gotten married. And I thought maybe I want to practice law, make more money, you know, have a different kind of life, see if I like it, because I did enjoy law school. And I did enjoy it, and I`m glad I did it because now it makes me a better journalist because when I`m interviewing people, I understand from their perspective because I represented clients who were in the press and who had to face crises. And so I really understand more of how they`re doing it. And I practiced corporate law, which is helpful to me as a "Wall Street Journal" reporter, to understand more than just the basics.

LANGLEY: In Knoxville, Tennessee. I went home to my home town.

LANGLEY: Let`s see. I was born in `58, so I stayed there and went to the University of Tennessee, graduated with a journalism major, then came to Georgetown. I only looked at two law schools, really, Columbia and Georgetown, because I still thought I wanted to be a journalist, and New York and Washington were very good journalism towns, and really liked Washington when I came to visit Georgetown, and so did that. Then I moved to New York for "The Wall Street Journal." I covered AT&T and telecommunications more than you want to know. Then moved back here to cover Congress and banking regulators and the presidential campaign, then practiced law, and then moved back to New York to be with "The Wall Street Journal." And I`ve written -- been writing page one stories for "The Journal" since `96.

LANGLEY: My husband! He`s with CBS, and that was another reason we moved back to New York, because he can obviously be involved with the network right there in New York City, and "The Wall Street Journal" is in New York. And so he was really the one who carried a lot of the burden of home. And we have a 4-year-old daughter. So he helped tremendously. This book wouldn`t have been possible without his being, you know, there to hold things down, even though he had a full-time job, because once I started writing, it`s such a solitary process, and it`s so consuming, and especially on Sandy Weill, who, as we`ve talked about, has his -- he can go hot and cold with people, and he did with me. So sometimes I would feel miserable -- you know, Am I ever going to get him to open up about this, or What am I going to do? And sometimes I would feel so high, you know, that I`ve really nailed this. I`ve got it. And so Roger was there with me as a fellow journalist, kind of knowing what I was going through.

LANGLEY: I never felt the biggest high after talking to Sandy. It wasn`t any conversations with Sandy. It would be when I felt that I really knew the inside of what happened, that I`d got it.

LANGLEY: Oh, gosh. There were several times. The biggest high -- I think one key time was when the board -- I really felt like I understood what happened at the board meeting. There was a huge showdown...

LANGLEY: Between John Reed and Sandy Weill of who would control the world`s largest financial empire. And Bob Rubin turned out to be key there, and you really saw these people -- they were -- the directors of some of the biggest companies in the world are on the Citicorp board, Citigroup board. And they ended up deciding things based on ego, John Reed`s ego, or, Sandy really wants the job so bad, should we let him have it? Has he misled us? And you get to see how ego, ambition, greed, petty -- sometimes petty things and other times very basic human emotions can be important in what happens in a financial empire or in corporate America. So that was one of the times when I felt like I`d really gotten what happened, to show -- I want to show a reader, kind of like a fly on the wall, you know, how -- what`s it like if you were in the room? And someone actually called me afterwards and said, Even though I knew how it came out, I was reading it with bated breath, what was going to happen next. And to me, that`s a great compliment, when people, like, kind of know who won, but you still want to read and see how did it happen.

LANGLEY: You know, almost everybody talked to me. There were a few people that did not talk to me, but none that I think were so key that I feel the book is not representative. I mean, John Reed is a key character, and he did not want to cooperate. He wanted Citigroup out of his life, and he was glad to be gone. I did see him and chat with him on different things that I pushed. Yes, John Reed is the one on the left. Yes.

LANGLEY: He was the chairman and CEO of Citicorp. He was a legendary banker. All the ATMs you see on every street corner is because of John Reed. He had the technological vision to do that. And he put Citicorp into 100 countries. So Sandy really, when he proposed Travelers, his insurance and securities empire, merge with Citicorp, he was getting the benefit of a great institution that had been around a long time. It had had trouble, but before John Reed, it was Walter Wriston (ph). It`s a legendary bank.And back in the days when Sandy was trying to break in on Wall Street, you know, he would see the Citicorp building, you know, the Citibank building, which has legends of finance around it, you know? And they were shutting the doors on Sandy Weill. So Citicorp was very important to Sandy. It was what he called the mother of all deals. If he could ever do that, then he would have succeeded. And John Reed was his way to get Citicorp. He got John Reed to agree. But then in the boardroom showdown we talked about, he got rid of him.

LANGLEY: This was in 2000, spring of 2000.

LANGLEY: Two years. At first, they had a great honeymoon. You know, it was a very quick courtship...

LANGLEY: They were co...

LANGLEY: Yes, they were co-chairmen and co-CEOs. And Sandy proposed that. He said, Let`s do this together. We won`t -- we`ll share power. And both -- when they took the deal to their boards, the Citicorp board and the Travelers board, the boards were, like, Oh, my God. Are you kidding? You both have huge egos. You both are used to running your own shows. This will never work. And Reed and Sandy Weill told them, Yes, it will. We`ve known each other for 30 years. We`ll make it work. So they had it -- they did -- they did this deal. At the time, it was the biggest merger ever, $83 billion. They did it in six weeks, negotiated only by them and a couple close aides. They didn`t want to involve anyone else because they didn`t want it to leak out because there would be a lot of potential opposition to this deal because they were breaking down barriers in financial services.

And then, at the beginning, they were very lovey-dovey. You know, they were on a honeymoon. Oh, Sandy, you`re so good at operations, Reed would say. What do you say? And then Sandy would say to Reed, Oh, you`re so good at strategy. What do you think? So they were all lovey-dovey. But when it got down to the nitty-gritty of running this day in and day out, they were so different, they couldn`t co-exist. And then it became a struggle.

LANGLEY: He -- basically, he just put his nose to the grindstone and got all his people in the most powerful operational positions. See, John Reed was getting tired of basically running things, worrying about the bottom line, worrying about the stock price...

LANGLEY: John Reed thought that they would put this deal together and then leave as soon as the deal was solid, as soon as the merger had happened and it was working well. John Reed understood that they would leave together. Sandy apparently never told him, Oh, no. That`s wrong. But he never told him, Oh, yes. That`s right.

And there`s one scene on the night -- the night before the deal was to be announced on -- you know, in New York, Sandy`s loyal general counsel notices some language in a filing that says, And then when the deal is done, they will leave together. And he calls John Reed`s lawyer the night before the deal is to be announced and says, Wait a minute. This isn`t the deal. And John Reed`s lawyer says, It is the deal, and that`s what John Tells me. And Sandy`s person said, You may think they`re going to ride into the sunset together, but Sandy hasn`t told me that. And at that point, they were -- it would stop the whole deal, and they said, Well, it`s not really imperative that it be in this SEC filing, so we`ll take it out. But that was the beginning, when John Reed should have been aware that Sandy really never intended to leave so quickly. This is Sandy`s life. He loves his work.

LANGLEY: Let`s see. Bob Rubin is on that board. There -- you know, Gerald Ford is still on the board. Interestingly, Ruben Mark (ph), the chairman and CEO of Colgate-Palmolive, has just decided to go off the board. He was on the Citicorp originally board, and he has become so frustrated with Sandy, when -- when they did oust John Reed in 2000, Sandy committed that within two years, he would -- a successor would be in place or the process would be working. And that was how they were to stroke each other`s ego. Well, John, we`re not just picking Sandy over you. Sandy will have to leave at some point.

And here it is 2003, Sandy`s not leaving. He doesn`t have a clear successor. In fact, he loves to confuse who might be his heir apparent. So Ruben Mark at a recent board meeting said to the board, this very elite board, Look, don`t we need to be talking about successors? We can`t just leave this to a little committee. We`ve got to -- this is one of the biggest jobs we need to do. What if something happens to Sandy tomorrow? And the board`s, like, Let`s leave it to the committee. And in frustration, Ruben Mark, the chairman of Colgate-Palmolive, has recently decided not to stand for reelection for the board.

LANGLEY: No, he is not on the board.

LANGLEY: Yes. Yes, it`s 5 percent of Citi, and he is not on the board.

LANGLEY: You know, he hasn`t expressed any interest. And I did interview him for the book. And obviously, if he calls Sandy Weill or Bob Rubin, they`ll take his call, but he says he`s a passive investor and that it`s done well for him. So I don`t -- I don`t know that he doesn`t keep -- he knows everything when it`s happening, though. They keep him abreast.

LANGLEY: Right.

LANGLEY: That was in 1991, I think. I may be off a little, but it was in the early `90s, when Citigroup -- Citicorp was really having a lot of trouble and because of the third world losses and things like that, the company was doing poorly.

LANGLEY: Jack Grubman was an analyst, and -- for Salomon Smith Barney. And an analyst is supposed to write what companies to invest in for their millions of investors. And his expertise was telecommunications. So he was touting WorldCom like crazy. Well, unbeknownst to the investing public, he was also advising WorldCom on what to do and was very close to the CEO. None of this came out until the stock market plummeted in the last year or so, and then you have investors and regulators and politicians looking for who to blame. We invested tons of money in WorldCom. Today it`s worthless. It`s bankrupt. And then you start unraveling and finding Jack Grubman was a key player, telling investors to buy in WorldCom even as it was tanking, and he was advising...

LANGLEY: Yes.

LANGLEY: Correct.

LANGLEY: Correct. And you know, that`s happened a lot in years past, where directors are on each other`s boards. The question became here that Sandy -- the one stock that Grubman was criticizing was AT&T. Sandy was on the board of AT&T, and he would -- he wanted Grubman to quit being so down on AT&T. Sandy and Armstrong believed in AT&T. Now, they were on each other`s boards, as note. So finally, Grubman gives -- finally, Grubman improves his rating when Sandy says, Take a fresh look.

Now, Sandy says that he never told Grubman what to write in his reports. However, I guess a lot of people say if your boss tells you take a fresh look and you know he`s on the AT&T board, you know he wants you to say something good. Grubman did change his rating to a positive one on AT&T. Then AT&T -- then Salomon Smith Barney got more business underwriting AT&T`s stock and other securities offerings. And then when everything kind of broke down, the e-mails were discovered that Grubman was writing to people at the time -- I changed my rating on AT&T to help Sandy win the battle with John Reed and get Armstrong`s vote and because then Sandy would help get my kids into an influential pre-school in Manhattan.

LANGLEY: The 92nd Street Y, one of the posh pre-schools in Manhattan.

LANGLEY: Yes. I mean, it`s -- you know, probably costs $10,000 a year to send your child -- your tot, your 3-year-old.

LANGLEY: Citigroup gave that school a million dollars in Grubman`s behalf -- on Grubman`s behalf.

LANGLEY: Well, apparently, Sandy did make a call to the 92nd Street Y and say, you know, If you could help Grubman`s kids get in -- Grubman -- Sandy did not know that -- he says he did not know the content of the e- mails and that Grubman was changing his rating to get Sandy`s help. Sandy said he helped Grubman just because he was a valued employee, and Grubman said, Will you make the call to the 92nd Street Y? I know who you know is more important than anything in New York City. And obviously, Sandy Weill had become a big name. So Sandy called, and then he said, And look, Citigroup will help out, and he gave a million-dollar donation.

Now, they view it -- I talked to directors. This is a very, you know, unusual thing to have occurred. And I did speak to directors, and they say it was presented to them as additional compensation for Grubman, to give him an additional million dollars. But Grubman was making $20 million a year. He really could have made his -- written his own million-dollar check. But it meant more coming from Sandy Weill`s Citigroup. And that`s why it was given.

LANGLEY: Gosh! That`s the great -- who knows? I mean...

LANGLEY: You know, there are a lot of people that when he was under fire and on the front pages of the newspaper that were privately cheering. I mean, there are a lot of people that he has crossed and done deals who, you know, don`t like him and think it`s time for him to get his comeuppance and get what he deserves. There are other people that still think it`s very unfair. He`s done a lot. He`s given a lot of charitable contributions, $200 million to Cornell Medical Center, now named the Cornell-Weill Medical Center, a lot to Carnegie Hall. They think he`s, you know, really tried to help, you know, community, the society, as well as -- he`s made a lot of people rich. If you owned Citigroup stock, you`d be a wealthy person right now.

LANGLEY: Yes. You know, some people say that he uses the same 50 or 100 words in all conversations. And not only does he have a somewhat limited vocabulary, he also is a very nervous speaker. And he has increased in stature, it`s required more public speaking. And so he truly does break out in a sweat any time he has to speak.

LANGLEY: Yes, yes, yes. I think that that`s true. He`s a very mercurial, unpredictable person. And that`s what makes him hard to work for, I think, because sometimes you don`t know if you`re up or you`re down with Sandy, people tell me. And he`ll yell at you like crazy on one day, and then the next day he`ll act as if nothing`s happened.

LANGLEY: Yes. That`s...

LANGLEY: Yes. You know, he manages by gossip or roaming around. And he -- you know, he doesn`t -- some CEOs like memos and detailed analysis. Part of Sandy`s strength is he not only operates on what is sound strategically, but he goes with his gut. And he looks somebody in the eye and tries to decide, Can I trust this person? Am I -- can I work with this person? So he loves to roam by managing or by gossip to get the true story, not just what`s on paper, because he doesn`t really operate by the written word. I mean, he does not read memos. If I were to walk in with a three-page memo, he`d turn it over, say, What are you here to talk about? That`s the way he is.

LANGLEY: Yes.

LANGLEY: Yes, it was -- you know -- yes. It`s a big merger. He was trying to buy -- he`s always merging, buying a bigger name, a bigger company, and then applying his management skills to the company. That was a particularly thorny merger. It was so huge. He was buying Lowbrodes, a big name, his Shearson empire in the late `70s, and I mean, everything was unraveling. They couldn`t put the back offices together. People were calling, saying, Where`s my stock? Customers all over the nation were saying, Where`s my stock? I can`t find it. I mean, it was, like -- they were about to have a meltdown.

And so the marketing people were blaming the technology people. They were blaming the brokerage for selling stocks when they should have settled down until the merger`s in place. You know, it was a blame game. He took all his executives down to Greenbriar, and they had a couple days of golfing and drinking. And late one night, you know, he really wants this blood loyalty, he`ll call it. And so some took him to heart! And they went in the kitchen and got a knife, cut -- pricked their fingers ….blood oath that they would make it work. They came back from Greenbriar and pulled off what was then such a huge merger that suddenly Sandy Weill`s empire was second only to Merrill Lynch in the 1970s. And this is from a guy who started from nothing.

LANGLEY: Yes. That`s so important to Sandy because it is the establishment. It means you have arrived. And as you see him from the book, from starting with -- you know, from being the son of immigrants and his dad left home and, you know, all these things that he felt like he always had a bunch of burdens, to be admitted to Augusta National was a big thing to Sandy. He loved it. And you know who got him in was Jim Robinson, his arch-enemy at American Express. Jim Robinson bested Sandy at American Express, and then fast forward, 20 years later, who helps get him into Augusta? Jim Robinson. And because by that point, Jim Robinson has been ousted from American Express himself, and he needs Sandy Weill`s Travelers empire to give him -- he wants to set up a venture fund, and he - - Sandy -- and Travelers are one of his first investors. So you know, you see these relationships. People come and go.

And one thing you`ll see is Sandy somehow, even though he`ll blast someone or someone will cross him, these relationships come and go. And that`s interesting. Through the book, you`ll see a lot of legends of business that he has worked with. It`s funny.

LANGLEY: Gosh! I kind of have a mixed opinion. I think Sandy is a likable person, and I -- and in some ways, he`s very likable. Other ways, he`s very hard to deal with. I`m not sure I`d want to work for him. I`m glad I wrote a book and he didn`t have control of it, which was an issue ongoing with him. But he -- gosh! He`s mixed. I feel like the people -- I interviewed so many people. I would say, Do you love him or hate him? And they say, Both. I think that`s what a lot of people feel about Sandy Weill. And to me, I feel I`ve done my job because at the beginning, I knew it wasn`t going to be a Valentine nor a hatchet job. You know, I wanted this to be a serious biography that would be readable. So there are parts of Sandy that I like and some parts that I don`t.

LANGLEY: Sandy`s a little bit mad.

LANGLEY: He`s had feedbackand a lot of people tell him they`ve read it, and they`re asking him to sign the book, that they admire him for everything he`s done. You know, other people say, Oh, my God! How has this man risen to the top with these tactics? So you know, the great thing is, he`s a larger-than-life personality, and you can really follow...

LANGLEY: ... what`s happened...

LANGLEY: Mad at me?

LANGLEY: I think not. You know, even the president of Citigroup and others called and said, You know, you really nailed it.

LANGLEY: Thank you. My pleasure.