Biography: Sanford Weill
Financier and Philanthropist

Sanford Weill was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He married his wife Joan shortly after graduating from Cornell University in 1955. Weill had joined Air Force ROTC while in college and planned to be a pilot, but cutbacks in defense spending canceled his military career, and he went to work as a $35 a week runner for the New York stockbrokers Bear Stearns. He quickly moved to work in the office and became a broker himself. He had found a career.

In 1960, while still in his twenties, Weill and three partners started a small brokerage: Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill. Over the next 20 years, Weill led the brokerage through 15 acquisitions, building it into the financial powerhouse Shearson, the second largest company in the securities industry. He sold Shearson to American Express in 1981 for $930 million. Weill became President of American Express, whose directors specifically hoped he would be able to turn around their failing insurance operation, Fireman's Fund. Although Weill succeeded in this goal, he became frustrated with the corporate culture at American Express and attempted unsuccessfully to buy Fireman's for himself. In 1985, he resigned from American Express.

At age 53, Weill, although wealthy, was out of work and thwarted in his efforts to find a job. In 1986 he traveled to Minneapolis to persuade Control Data to spin off its subsidiary, Commercial Credit, in an IPO (initial public offering) worth $850 million. Control Data sold 82 percent of the company to the public, Weill took over as CEO, investing $7 million of his own money. Besides Commercial Credit's lending operation, Weill had acquired its subsidiary, a property and casualty insurance company called Gulf Insurance.

By 1988, Weill and his team had turned Commercial Credit around and acquired Primerica Corp., for $1.5 billion, along with its holdings, the brokerage Smith Barney and the A.L. Williams insurance company, which Weill renamed Primerica Financial Services (PFS). The whole conglomerate of brokerage, commercial credit, and insurance operations would continue under the name Primerica Corp.

Over the next two years, Weill's Primerica Corp. absorbed the consumer lending operations of Barclays American/Financial, and acquired receivables and branches from Landmark Financial Services.

In 1992 alone, Primerica raised $625 million by selling non-strategic assets. Weill made a decisive move, buying 27 percent of Travelers Insurance for $722.5 million. Sanford Weill earned $67.6 million, that year, most of it from stock options. He was the second-highest-paid executive in America.

The following year, he succeeded in realizing an old dream. He regained control of Shearson, buying the his old firm back from American Express for $1.2 billion in March. He acquired Shearson's 8400 brokers and state-of-the-art back office, while leaving behind Shearson's litigation liability.

With Shearson under its belt, Weill's Primerica purchased the remaining shares of Travelers with $4 billion in stock. Weill merged Shearson with Smith Barney, retaining the formidable Shearson office facilities, and closing Smith Barney's.

Travelers Group, as the resulting parent company was called, included brokerage, term insurance, consumer finance, property-casualty insurance, life insurance, money management and investment banking operations.

In 1996, Weill acquired the property and casualty operations of Aetna insurance for $4 billion. The insurance companies were reorganized into separate life, term, and property-casualty operations. Smith Barney Shearson played a major role in financing the merger of Viacom Inc., with Paramount Communications.

Travelers' 1996 profits made it number 32 of the Fortune 500 list of America's most successful companies. The original shares of Commercial Credit appreciated tenfold in the decade since Weill first bought them.

In September, 1997, Travelers paid $9.1 billion in stock to acquire Salomon, Inc., the parent company of the investment bank Salomon Brothers. Weill merged Salomon with Smith Barney to create the second largest securities firm in the world. In April, 1998, Weill announced the biggest coup of all. His Travelers Group would merge with Citicorp, the parent company of Citibank, to create Citigroup, Inc. Citicorp is the world's largest supplier of credit cards, and Citibank is the second largest bank in the United States. The merged companies will be the global leader in financial services, with 100 million customers in 100 countries. At the beginning of the day the merger was announced, the two companies were valued at about $70.6 billion. By the end of the day, the value of their combined stock had jumped to $83.6 billion. Sanford Weill will serve as Co-Chairman and Co-CEO with Citicorp Chairman John S. Reed.

Sanford Weill runs his businesses like an owner. He avoids consultants and gets to know a company by getting to know people at all levels of the business. All of Travelers' employees are encouraged to own stock in the company. Senior managers (who number in the thousands) receive up to 25 percent of their pay in stock, which they are not allowed to sell for two years.

Sanford Weill and his wife Joan make their home in Greenwich Connecticut. Two of their children, Marc Weill and Jessica Weill Bibliowicz, have held top jobs at Travelers. In addition to his business activities, Sanford Weill is active in philanthropic activities in New York City, where he works, as well as in Baltimore and at his alma mater, Cornell University. As chairman of Carnegie Hall, he raised $60 million for renovation of its facilities; one of the concert halls is named for him.