Tearing Down the Walls: How Sandy Weill Fought His Way to the Top of the Financial World...and Then Nearly Lost It All

by Monica Langley

Book Overview

He is one of the world's most accomplished figures of modern finance. As chairman and chief executive officer of Citigroup, Sanford "Sandy" Weill has become an American legend, a banking visionary whose innovativeness, opportunism, and even fear drove him from the lowliest jobs on Wall Street to its most commanding heights. In this unprecedented biography, acclaimed Wall Street Journal reporter Monica Langley provides a compelling account of Weill's rise to power. What emerges is a portrait of a man who is as vital and as volatile as the market itself.
Tearing Down the Walls tells the riveting inside story of how a Jewish boy from Brooklyn's back alleys overcame incredible odds and deep-seated prejudices to transform the financial-services industry as we know it today.
Using nearly five hundred firsthand interviews with key players in Weill's life and career -- including Weill himself -- Langley brilliantly chronicles not only his success and scandals but also the shadows of his hidden self: his father's abandonment and his loving marriage; his tyrannical rages as well as his tearful regrets; his fierce sense of loyalty and his ruthless elimination of potential rivals. By highlighting in new and startling detail one man's life in a narrative as richly textured and compelling as a novel, Tearing Down the Walls provides the historical context of the dramatic changes not only in business but also in American society in the last half century.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743247264
• ISBN13: 9780743247269
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 460 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Book

Anyone who wishes to know hwat happened on Wall Street and why it happened will find this book extremely interesting. Greed is the key word and a complete lack of loyalty to their fellow Wall Street gang or even their own families. Very good book.

Honest, Provacative and Very Well Written

I read this book to get some insight into Sandy's right hand man Jammie Diamond who was about to become the CEO of Chase, the company I worked for. I must say that it was so interesting that I could not put the book down. It's a biography that reads like a novel. The world of finance and Sandy's role in it's history is spell binding. Monica Langley did an excellent job writing this book and look forward to reading anything else she's done. If this subject is of any interest to you then you will be glad you took the time to read this book.

Fascinating book

Whether you like Sandy Weil or not is not the issue here. This is just a fascinating book and one of the best books I have read in a while. You will not regret the time that you spend reading this.

AWESOME BOOK ABOUT WALLSTREET

This book is great!!!!! I haven't finished it yet but I am glued to the pages..taking about the ascent of a brooklyn kid. Sandy is human and has every flaw but it talks about business and no bull..... it's not one of those sugared biographies. It talks about the strong personalities in wallstreet and also building great businesses. I thoroughly recommend it as required reading.

Best Business Biography I have read!

I like business biographies and specifically those concerning investment banking. Sandy Weill's career is so diverse with so many companies turned around that this book is the best I have read in detailing a man's lifetime case study. For those who may not be familiar with Sandy Weill, he started on Wall Street with a small firm as Wall Street was struggling with sheer back-office paperwork and quickly grew that into a force challenging Merrill Lynch. After a merger with American Express, Weill was eventually forced out. He returned to corporate management buying a Baltimore finance company in trouble, Commercial Credit. After merging with Travelers Insurance, Weill eventually merges with Citicorp creating the largest financial institution in the world.What makes this book interesting are the character flaws of Sandy Weill. While he has strengths in cost cutting efficiency, he has many management flaws. Temper management, delegation of authority, public speaking are but a few of the flaws detailed in this book. Of particular interest is his relationship with Jamie Dimon, his long-time younger protégé, who is eventually let go and now runs Bank One.There is one complaint I have with this book. At the takeover of Commercial Credit, there are significant discussions of the changes in management philosophy that are quite interesting. But after significant work and allusion of improvement, no report of financial performance was provided to demonstrate mathematically how positive the improvement was. Obviously, it was significant given the mergers that took place after the turnaround of Commercial Credit.I must compliment the author on a thorough research job. It was clear from the dialog that this book would have been impossible without interviews with many different people including Sandy Weill. I did not find this book tipped to Weill's favor as a "fluff" piece but rather I thought the author balanced the good with the bad.In summary, if you like business summaries dealing with finance you will like this book.