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

Monica Langley (Author)

Book Description

Series: Wall Street Journal Book | Publication Date: March 10, 2003

The riveting inside story of how a rough-edged kid from Brooklyn became a billionaire, shaped the future of financial services around the world and built the world's largest financial empire. Sandford 'Sandy' Weill is the most important player in today's financial world. He has swallowed up one major company after another, from Smith Barney to Travelers to Salomon Brothers and, his ultimate triumph, control of Citigroup - the world's largest financial empire. Yet the Weill story is much more than a business chronicle. It's the enthralling account of a man who made it, lost it, then made it a again. A man who's determination and innovation helped him overcome youthful slights and mid-life failure and to take on the financial titans of our time. In TEARING DOWN THE WALLS, lawyer and journalist Monica Langley reveals the unorthodox management style and surprisingly simple principles that have contributed to Weill's success. By highlighting in new and startling detail one man's life, TEARING DOWN THE WALLS provides the historical context not only of the dramatic changes in business, but also American society in the last half century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A symbol of crony capitalism thanks to his friendly phone call to the 92nd Street Y pre-school on behalf of analyst Jack Grubman, Sanford Weill helped lay the groundwork for today's vertically integrated (and scandal-ridden) financial industry. Starting with a small brokerage, Weill built several business empires that culminated in the $83 billion 1998 merger that put him atop the global financial services leviathan Citigroup, an unprecedented agglomeration of investment and retail banks, insurance companies, consumer loan corporations and stock brokerages. More than a mere deal-maker, he also brought "lean and mean" management to Wall Street by laying off workers, slashing benefits, raiding pension funds and substituting stock options for salaries. Wall Street Journal reporter Langley's colorful biography tells this story well. She paints a vivid portrait of Weill, whose messy appetites, towering tantrums and voracious desire for corporate jets and other status symbols make him seem occasionally pre-schoolish himself, and provides a blow-by-blow account of Wall Street's sometimes explosive restructuring grounded in pettiness, nepotism and backstabbing. It's hard, though, to see the drama in executive turf battles when even the losers walk away with $30 million golden parachutes, and larger issues can get lost in the soap opera of office politics. The economic ramifications of the financial industry's reorganization are hardly touched on, and the effects of Weill's draconian cost-cutting on the rank-and-file who bore the brunt of it are treated as an untroubling prerequisite to rising productivity and share-holder value. Langley's book is informative and highly readable, but there's a much bigger story to be told.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

A riveting narrative -- Forbes.com, February 21, 2003

A well-written, fast-paced read that does the best job yet of explaining who Sandy Weill is. -- BusinessWeek, March 3, 2003

Bryan Burrough coauthor of Barbarians at the Gate No single figure looms larger in Wall Street history over the last thirty years than Sandy Weill, and until now no single book has captured his boundless energy, street-savvy intellect, and towering ambition. More than a riveting narrative of one man's relentless climb to the top of the financial world, Tearing Down the Walls is also a fascinating chronicle of how Wall Street changed in the 90s. Any business person interested in the current world of finance will want to devour the book now, and I suspect it will be mandatory reading on trading floors and in business school for years to come. -- Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; First Printing edition (March 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074321613X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743216135
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #813,230 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Business Biography I have read!, March 16, 2003

By 

R. Spell "raspell" (Memphis, TN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tearing Down the Walls: How Sandy Weill Fought His Way to the Top of the Financial World. . .and Then Nearly Lost It All (Hardcover)

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.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good but Not Great - Weill is no hero, July 13, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Tearing Down the Walls: How Sandy Weill Fought His Way to the Top of the Financial World. . .and Then Nearly Lost It All (Wall Street Journal Book) (Paperback)

'Bonfire of the Vanities' and 'Barbarians at the Gate' are great books of this genre, since they refused to cast the Wall Street characters as heroes, but display in full their naked greed, fear, and ambition. Langley tries mightily to cast Weill as a 'David' going up against the WASP 'Goliath' and winning, and omits the obvious and profound hypocrisy of Weill:

- Despite Weill's emphasis on stock options - not cash - as financial incentives for his employees, Weill himself became the highest and most overpaid CEO by getting the slavish board to grant him obscene amounts of CASH for his compensation.

- Weill and Dimon are responsible for laying off tens of thousands of people in their career, and their ruthlessness are in full display in Langley's book. As the saying goes, cruel people are equally sentimental. The depth of self-pity of Weill and Dimon when they themselves get fired are simply revolting in their hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

- Weill's monstrous capacity for decadent self-indulgence is biblical in its scale. While becoming hysterical against employee benefits that are measured in pennies, he gets equally hysterical when faced with scrutiny of his fleet of corporate jets, ironically by his right-hand man, Jamie Dimon.

Weill is a modern day equivalent of the rail road and oil robber barons of the last century, i.e. megalomanic monsters who squeeze every penny out of his employees to expand his empire, and then spends the money to re-cast himself as a pioneer, benefactor and philanthropist.

Langley had to make many compromises in order to get access to Weill's world and played right into his hand. In the last 100 pages of her book, the author appears to be increasingly star struck, focusing on the lavish lifestyle and adulation of an aging tycoon surrounded by sycophants.

If Langley had the courage, she would have pointed out the obvious: Weill is no David, but indeed the very description of the "rich man" described in Bible:

" There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day... The rich man also died and was buried; and in Hell, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom. And he called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame... But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. "

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book, October 31, 2008

By 

Rebecca J. Brewer - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tearing Down the Walls: How Sandy Weill Fought His Way to the Top of the Financial World. . .and Then Nearly Lost It All (Wall Street Journal Book) (Paperback)

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.