Sandy Weill

  • 22 Dec 2011 at 1:19 PM

Get In On Sandy Weill’s Blow-Out Sale Today

By Bess Levin

For reasons that are not yet entirely clear, Sandy Weill is selling all his worldly possessions. (He claims he and the wife are “downsizing a little bit” but this smacks more of someone having a feng shui attack.) Earlier this month it was Sando’s 15 Central Park West penthouse, which was bought for $88 million as a gift for a 22 year-old fertilizer heiress, today it’s his yacht. For those in the market: Continue reading »

  • 11 Nov 2011 at 3:05 PM

Sleep Where Sandy Weill Hath Slept

By Bess Levin

In the market for a 6,744-square-foot penthouse with views of Central Park and the opportunity to run into Lloyd, Loeb or Sting in the elevator? Sandy Weill’s got something you might be interested in. It’s his 15CPW apartment and the Journal reports it could be yours for $88 million, merely double what Weill paid for it in 2007. What’s in it for you? In addition to a 2,077-square-foot terrace, 12 and a half foot high ceilings, plus the knowledge that Sandy “held parties for scores of guests in his 33-foot-wide living room, with the concert pianist Lang Lang performing,” you’d be making Sando, whose heart still hurts over everything that went down at Citi, look good. How so? Sandy and Joan, who’ve decided to kick it old school by downsizing to a smaller apartment in the same building (“He said he wanted it known that he was remaining true to his roots in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and wasn’t abandoning New York City”), won’t be keeping the money.

Sanford I. Weill, the former chairman and chief executive of Citigroup Inc., has put one of the most celebrated postwar penthouses in Manhattan on the market for $88 million, saying that at a difficult period in the country’s history, it is “a pretty good time” for wealthy Americans “to be quiet.” He said he intends to donate to charity the proceeds from the sale.

And, if you happen to be one of the jerks who abandoned the guy in recent years, there’s a bonus component for laying down the cash- you get to live, having bought your way off Joan Weill’s To Kill list. Continue reading »

  • 27 Jan 2011 at 10:25 AM

Compensation Practices Found To Have No Bearing On Financial Crisis, Says Panel

By Bess Levin

No, just messing with you. Banker pay “fueled risk that hobbled the economy,” according the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission’s report, released today. Continue reading »

  • 26 Mar 2010 at 12:28 PM

Sandy Weill Says Start Demanding A Little R-E-S-P-E-C-T

By Bess Levin

You know, it’s really not that easy being Sandy Weill. Most if not all the institutions at which he spent significant time in his life at get zero respect, and even those on the inside have no pride (in fact they’re downright embarrassed to tell their friends and family where they are all day). Call it the Curse of the Weill Taint, if you will. Anyway, the big guy has more or less given up on doing anything about company morale at the Citi (previously he’d planned some sort of pep rally that involved him, Vikram, a whole lot of face paint, plus a Chuck Prince-shaped piñata, but that plan went to hell the day he found out he’s not allowed within 200 feet of the building). And so, he’s set his sights elsewhere. Continue reading »

  • 04 Jan 2010 at 10:10 AM

Sandy Weill Is Sad About Citi

By Bess Levin

Talk whatever shit you want about the former Citi chairman, and I’m sure you already have, but the man has feelings. Lots of ‘em, which he unloaded on the Times over the weekend. Sandford looks at his old firm and his heart bleeds for what it’s become, namely a place where no one will take his calls and his name is under a Do Not Admit list at 399 Park Avenue. Once the most majestic bank in all the land, thanks to Weill rolling up his sleeves and cobbling it together from repurposed Monster Truck parts, SDubs aches over the fact that this pile of garbage “will never be same company that it was.” And he acknowledges, from his office on the 46th floor of the General Motors, which he for some reason needs (in addition to “a few” assistants, and pictures of himself all over the walls), that a little bit of that is his fault. Here’s what Sandy Weill did wrong, according to Sandy Weill:
* Recommending Chuck Prince as his successor, who “let Citi’s balance sheet balloon and took on huge risks”
Here’s what Sandy Weill didn’t do wrong, according to Sandy Weill:
* Recruiting Bob Rubin
* The whole Glass-Steagall thing
* Firing Jamie Dimon
* Taking the jet to Cabo shortly after the bank received an asston of money from the government
* Whatever else you’re thinking, and trying to pin on him
As the shit started to hit the fan Weill tried to help, of course, as he is a mensch and the only who can fix this thing, but it was no use. Fools running the place didn’t want to hear from him.

Starting in late 2007, he began approaching some members of Citi’s board about returning to help with its recovery. He tried first when the board was looking to replace Mr. Prince as C.E.O., and later after Vikram Pandit got the job. At the time, Mr. Weill imagined that he would be welcomed. “I had 50 years of experience,” he says. “I think I was a pretty good student of the markets, and the business. I had a good feel of things. I felt that just because I retired didn’t mean my brain went to mush. Maybe I could help.” No one responded to his offers.

You know who would’ve responded to his offers, had he not been fired for catching a BJ on the company jet? Todd Thomson.

Mr. Thomson was forced out in 2007, Mr. Weill was one of his first calls: “I unloaded to Sandy,” Mr. Thomson says.

And while the two are still tossing around the idea to start a fund together with a bunch of ex-Citi employees where no one’s going to give you shit for accepting a blow job, or whatever, from a willing CNBC employee, Toddy-boy doesn’t do Sandy much good vis-a-vis gaining access to the building in order to go down in history as the guy who saved Citigroup, does he? So for now, all Sands can do is reflect. His wife, Joan, is a little bit more angry about the situation and by angry we mean she has an actual list of people she blames for hurting her husband, who she’s planning on murdering.

Continue reading »

  • 24 Jul 2008 at 9:36 AM

Citi To Stay Inefficiently, Unprofitably Huge

By Bess Levin

For those of you losing sleep over the thought of shrinkage at the house of Citi, DO NOT FEAR: despite calls by persons with a clue, the great big behemoth wants you to know that’s never going to happen. On a conference call yesterday, chief financial officer Gary Crittenden told analysts– worried that this last quarter’s results were a sign of great things to come– that the bank doesn’t have “any intention to break up,” and, in fact, is meeting with contractors next week to discuss adding on a master bedroom (including his and her sinks, natch) and deck.
Citigroup doubles cash to cope with markets [IHT via DealBook]