The King of Capital: Sandy Weill and the Making of Citigroup

Stone and Brewster, both business journalists, trace Sanford Weill's career from a back-office job through the assembly of Citigroup. The narrative runs through Carter, Berlind, Potoma and Weill in the 1960s, the roll-up of brokerage firms into Shearson, the sale to American Express in 1981, Weill's departure after losing the internal contest there, his restart at Commercial Credit in Baltimore in 1986, and the sequence of acquisitions through Primerica, Smith Barney, Travelers, Salomon Brothers and finally Citicorp in 1998.

The authors argue that Weill's skill was not investing or product innovation but deal-making combined with severe cost discipline. He bought firms in distress, cut expenses hard and fast, used his own rising stock as acquisition currency, and repeated the pattern. They also present the financial supermarket thesis, that one firm should sell banking, brokerage, insurance and investment banking to the same customer, and note that the Citicorp merger required Congress to repeal the remaining Glass-Steagall restrictions.

The book is sympathetic and was published before the outcome was known. Citigroup subsequently proved that the supermarket produced few cross-selling gains and considerable risk, needed a government rescue in 2008, and spent the next decade selling off what Weill assembled. Weill himself later said the repeal of Glass-Steagall was a mistake.

Read it for the mechanics of serial acquisition and expense-driven integration, not for a verdict on the strategy.