Sandy Weill Quotes

100 Sandy Weill Quotes

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[In 1998] I would think that if you went and spoke to the people we did our deals with, 99 percent of them, or maybe 100 percent would think they were treated very well, that it was fair, that we kept our word, and they would do another deal with us. And I think that if you don’t leave that kind of impression, the next deal is not going to be there.
Sandy Weill

CBWL, at the time we took over Hayden Stone, an old WASPy firm, obviously wasn’t their first choice.
Sandy Weill

[On CBWL taking over Hayden Stone] I was the cautious one. Roger was a great risk taker.
Sandy Weill

[On being snubbed by BankAmerica] I never got through the gate to make a proposal.
Sandy Weill

I had good fortune in finding partners who were also renegades, who came from environments that were bureaucracies and not meritocracies. So we had something special and exciting to offer them at Primerica.
Sandy Weill

[On rivalry with American Express] It’s just not true.
Sandy Weill

I’m putting it all on the line again.
Sandy Weill

Ownership gets employees to think like owners, to think the company is really theirs. Really good ideas and innovative ideas come from the bottom of organizations, where people are dealing directly with customers… People can see the silly things the chairman may be doing that is wasting a lot of money, and there might be a better way to do it. We encourage people to think that way.
Sandy Weill

I wasn’t charged with any wrongdoing… Still, the crisis had taken its toll. The weeks of seeing my reputation – my most important asset – dragged through the mud worse me down and hurt deeply.
Sandy Weill

Suddenly, I recognized that my reputation as an honest, successful, and civic-mined business leader had survived after all.
Sandy Weill



I loved watching our surging stock price and interpreted the gains as a vote of confidence in my leadership.
Sandy Weill

I understood that creating Citigroup amounted to the deal of a lifetime. It represented the culmination of nearly fifty years of hard work and personal sacrifice.
Sandy Weill

As the chairman and CEO of Citigroup – the largest financial institution in the world – I had been thrown into the ensuing maelstrom by those seeking scapegoats for the losses experienced by countless investors. Citigroup’s past standards had been no worse than average, yet, sadly, the attention of investors, regulators, and the press managed to stick on our company.
Sandy Weill

A strong balance sheet and highly efficient operations are the keys to taking advantage of adverse industry cycles.
Sandy Weill

If a company can’t keep growing, it will atrophy or die. Thinking that way encourages decisive action, even when times are tough.
Sandy Weill

We used competitors’ distress to our advantage and made a name for ourselves in the process.
Sandy Weill

I misgauged… and unfortunately learned too late that I had joined with someone who seemed incapable of making tough decisions… I learned a number of valuable lessons in the few years I spent there, but the insights into the pitfalls of bureaucracy and corporate infighting were among the most valuable.
Sandy Weill

I always worried about my business and never felt I could ease up on thinking about potential risks. Indeed, I had many sleepless nights, some of which I even spent at the office. My team understood the special importance I placed on surfacing problems early.
Sandy Weill

I… limited the risk to our company’s balance sheet and preferred to take operational risk rather than assume too much financial leverage… Never betting the balance sheet, we could live with the consequences of an occasional operational mistake.
Sandy Weill

I routinely emphasized driving down our costs, knowing that efficient companies enjoy more staying power during industry downturns.
Sandy Weill



Maybe I suffer from a subconscious need to buy the best labels, but my accumulation of brands over the years opened doors for our professionals, served our clients better, and built a more powerful enterprise.
Sandy Weill

I was never a believer in grand strategic schemes. But it’s a mistake to conclude that I approached decisions without a clear and reasoned plan.
Sandy Weill

I’m not sure it’s possible to teach good intuition, but constantly seeking information and insight is vital.
Sandy Weill

I relentlessly read…
Sandy Weill

My informal decision-making approach allowed my colleagues and me to act quickly when we saw opportunities, often as our competitors dithered.
Sandy Weill

I’ve sweated more mergers and other important decisions than I’d care to admit, but having a sense of vulnerability helped tremendously in successfully executing decisions.
Sandy Weill

Having the conviction on an idea and the buy-in of my management team ensured that my nervousness would push us forward rather than become a source of paralysis.
Sandy Weill

My wife labeled me a pragmatic dreamer because I looked at the big picture and aimed to build a great and lasting company, recognizing all the while that success comes one step at a time.
Sandy Weill

I always worked hard for our shareholders.
Sandy Weill

Successful business leaders ought to give back to society and share business and organizational skills with not-for-profit institutions which serve the public.
Sandy Weill



I now see that you can run a better private business if you help run philanthropic enterprises.
Sandy Weill

[In 2006] Over my fifty years in business… The business world and the financial services industry have undergone massive changes in recent decades. I’ve ridden the rapids: the globalization of commerce and finance, and the waves of consolidation across many industries…
Sandy Weill

I’m proud that I built two extraordinarily successful companies in very different eras. Most people would have been happy to have had just one such accomplishment.
Sandy Weill

[In his early business days] How to produce sufficient cash flow to have enough left over to feed our families soon became our major challenge. Before long, we effectively solved that problem by bringing in two additional partners…
Sandy Weill

Being my own boss was empowering and nerve-wracking all at the same time. It allowed me to dream, but it also instilled discipline, self-confidence, and a work ethic the likes of which I had never consistently mustered before.
Sandy Weill

I’m still amazed I was able to summon the confidence to start my own business. I was shy as a child and through all my years of schooling was at best an uneven student.
Sandy Weill

My mother was no great intellect, yet she had a terrific head for numbers and always was concerned that Helen [sister] and I should have a good education. Maybe it was because of her basic frugality, but my mother had an unbelievable knack for memorizing and calculating figures, and she taught me at a very early age about arithmetic before it was called modern math. To this day, I can manipulate numbers in my head with ease.
Sandy Weill

[On getting married] Despite the tussle with my dad earlier that year, Joanie’s father told us he’d be willing to spend $5,000 on our wedding and gift and gave us the option on how the sum should be split. We ended up receiving $3,500 in cash. My father-in-law insisted on investing it for us since he didn’t respect my judgment on financial matters.
Sandy Weill

My commissions zoomed to the point where I brought home $25,000 in 1959.
Sandy Weill

[On working for I. W. ‘Tubby’ Burnham early in his career] Tubby may not have been a rocket scientist, but he taught me the importance of focusing on the basics in running a business, especially the need to respect and value one’s employees.
Sandy Weill



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