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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good Read but Quite Biased. And nothing new from other books...,
By
This review is from: The Real Deal: My Life in Business and Philanthropy (Hardcover)
This is actually quite an interesting book and a fairly good and fast read. However compared to the previous two books on Weill, this offers maybe only 5% new information and some extra personal view on events that were reported by other authors.
My main gripe with this book is that it shows everything in a very biased view. Everyones "leaving" Sandy for whatever reason gave him a feeling of betrayal and as someone who did not appricate what was done for them by Sandy. Jamie Dimon is depicted as a strong personality, maybe inflexible (Joan Weill also cites this as reason for why everyone close to Jamie left him), but this is not considered the reason why everyone (and really everyone) close to Sandy left and did not continue working for him. While a lot of associates were described as people who could not change the way they worked, Sandy himself writes about having "issues" leaving day to day runnning of Citibank to Chuck Prince. And frankly, Joan Weills section on giving her perspective of things seems to be another attempt to defend the actions of Sandy Weill. Maybe the only way for a really different perspective on this will be if other executives (especailly Jamie Dimon) ever pen down their side of the story. Sandy Weill - A really interesting character - achieved a lot despite his humble beginning and background; a maverick who shook up the biggest financial industry. But as a book on him, I prefer other books, especially "King of Capital"
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Boring and Lacking in Useful Information,
By
This review is from: The Real Deal: My Life in Business and Philanthropy (Hardcover)
I read "The Real Deal" in the hope of gaining insight on how to be a good manager. The book did not help; the main "insight" I gained was the suspicion that Weill's success was largely due to his having strong people as operational assistants - eg. Cohen at Shearson, and Dimon at Citigroup.
The one other potential insight I took away from the book was Weill's endorsement of requiring top executives to hold most of their stock until retirement (thus avoiding the incentive for short-term manipulations); it was also somewhat interesting (and disappointing) to read of the key role played by politics at American Express while Weill was there.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
You Catch a Glimpse of the Man,
By
This review is from: The Real Deal: My Life in Business and Philanthropy (Hardcover)
Business memoirs are usually way too self serving to tell you anything useful, but this one is an exception. Weill has many dramatic stories and, despite the co-author, conveys enough of what appears to be his real thoughts to be interesting. This is one of the toughest and wiliest - no pun - players on Wall Street, but one actually feels for him when he describes the trap New York attorney-general Spitzer set for Citigroup just as Weill thought the bank's legal problems were under control. Analyst Grubman's emails were leaked, the scandal was all over the press, but Weill and Citigroup couldn't really respond. He was like a mouse trying to dodge a menacing cat, while forbidden to make any noise. So powerful a chief executive was forced into a pitiful situation--yet the government didn't have a case with the Grubman revelations and nothing came of it. In the meanwhile, Citigroup's stock tanked. Some poor innocent investor who happened to own it lost money as the prosecutors played with Weill until they decided there was no case against him. Life isn't fair and the government much less so. Not that Weill has reason to complain, all in all: he went to the bank and came out with a fortune. As distinguished a career as possible, through the ups and downs and despite the tribulations toward the end with Spitzer. Definitely worth reading.
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