Weill’s professed conversion set off a flurry of reactions. The banking industry’s critics hailed it as proof that the biggest banks should be split. “Sanford Weill is one of many banking industry experts who have observed that too big to fail is often too big to manage,” Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said in a statement.
Others were unimpressed.
Joshua Brown, a New York investment adviser who writes the blog “The Reformed Broker,” called Weill “the original architect of Too Big To Fail” banking and noting that Weill didn’t apologize “for the Citigroup he built or its imitators.”
“Perhaps this is about burnishing his legacy,” Brown wrote.
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Weill said he hadn’t talked to JPMorgan’s Dimon and Vikram Pandit, Citigroup’s current CEO, about his new stance. Dimon was Weill’s protege before getting ousted in a power struggle in the late ’90s. Pandit took over at Citigroup after Weill’s friend, Chuck Prince, lost the job.
Asked what he thought their reaction would be, Weill replied, “I don’t know. You’ll find out.”
Former Citigroup CEO Believes “Big Banks Should Be Broken Up” was originally published on elev8.com
