Sandy Weill was the guest host on CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning. Sandy( My former boss, when I was a Vice President at Salomon Smith Barney) used this opportunity to rewrite his legacy. In 1999, Sandy was the main force behind repealing Glass Steagall and forming the modern financial supermarket, which combines all aspects of finance under one roof.
This morning he proposed that the only way to bring back confidence to the financial institutions is to break up the super banks into a separate commercial bank, that would accept deposits and lend money: and an investment bank that would underwrite, invest, and trade for themselves and their clients.
So Sandy now recommends tearing apart the concept he promoted. He says the times have changed. Indirectly this is a shot at his former prodigy, Jamie Dimon, who now runs J P Morgan Chase, the largest financial supermarket (by assets). Sandy won a power struggle with Jamie when both were at Citi- Bank.
When Sandy makes a statement he does it in a big way. He arranged for his daughter, Jessica Bibliowicz, CEO of National Financial Partners, to be on the show as a guest. The head of Immunology at Weill Cornell (his namesake medical institution) was a guest. JD Hoye, President of The National Academy Foundation ( An organization that Sandy Weill founded) was a guest and The Traveler’s Corp.,one of Sandy’s companies was one of the major advertisers during the segment. So for two hours you basically had the Sandy Weil show.
Discussions about this broke out during meetings in Washington this morning. I will refer readers to a previous post on this site entitled This Little Piggy Went to Market. We’ll see if this is the catalyst for any major change!! RJB