Rating: 
Summary: An irascible genius
Review: "Tearing Down the Walls" charts the ascent of Citigroup Chairman Sandy Weill, from lowly brokerage clerk to master of a globe-straddling financial empire. What emerges is a picture of a man who is fiercely ambitious and terrifyingly astute - but also seriously flawed.
Prone to fits of rage, Weill regularly unleashes streams of expletives on petrified subordinates, sometimes reducing them to tears. He is quick to punish close lieutenants foolish enough to evince the slightest bit of disloyalty. And his laser-like focus on cost-cutting tends to sow disaffection among employees.
But he is also something of an enigma. Despite his fearsome temper, he has a tremendous capacity for empathy, often moved to tears upon learning of the plight of others. Shy and unassertive in his early days, he later metamorphoses into a self-assured and forceful leader.
Langley is a skilled raconteur and her silken prose is a pleasure to read. Her ability to glean the finer details of Weill's life is also impressive. Without a doubt, this is one of the best business books of the year.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but Not Great - Weill is no hero
Review: '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. "
Rating:
Summary: Gets you to the depths of corporate America
Review: An excellent book - very well written in its explanation of the players and their thoughts and emotions during each phase of Sandy Weill's life. The author has captured the without too much bias either way, Sandy Weill's modus operandi on his way to the top. While the back stabbing and the political ways of corporate America are sometimes nauseating, there is also admiration for the focused manner in which this man has risen to the top and for the author who presented his journey through this book. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is in the corporate world and especially to people in the financial sector.
Rating:
Summary: Phenomenal
Review: Having only the most basic knowledge of the financial community, and knowing nothing about Wall Street, Langley's book is an absolute treasure trove of facts, insights and commentary of how Wall Street operated forty years ago to this very day. Her book well written, concise and totally comprehendible regardless of your financial know-how. Sandy Weill has achieved the most incredible amount throughout his lifetime. No challenge was incomprehensible. From Corned Beef With Lettuce to Citicorp, the book details how the man today who shapes Wall Street overcame every imaginable obstacle. High Street brands and personalities we are all familiar with come together in this fabulously orchestrated jigsaw which today has come together to form one of the most recognisable consumer financial firms today - Citibank. A tremendous read.
Rating:
Summary: Tear 'em all down, right? So walls keep people down?
Review: I have mixed feelings about this book. I guess society needs to improve though, somehow. I was more excited about a dead rock star in the new bio "Layne Staley: Angry Chair." He lived behind big, closed walls for 6 years before dying in 2002.
Rating:
Summary: Best Business Biography I have read!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Depressing information
Review: I thought the book was well written and very well researched. However, I could only read the first quarter of the book because I found it depressing that such a despicable person could achieve so much apparent success, power and influence in American politics.
Rating:
Summary: Packed with Knowledge!
Review: Monica Langley follows Sandford Weill, a shy Jewish boy from Brooklyn, through his youthful struggles against adversity, his journey to the absolute top of the financial world and his tainted success. Seen through the prism of Weill's tumultuous career, the financial world is small, despite its importance, internally more like a village than a city. The book just confirms your suspicions that practical finance bears almost no resemblance to what you learned in economics class. We commend Langley for skillfully molding the saga of this titanic financier's career into such a compelling, well-constructed narrative.
Rating: 
Summary: a long newspaper article....
Review: The author could have done much more with her subject. Many anecdotes in the book suggest Sandy Weill is a complex character. For example, Weill is presented at the same time as a monumentally frugal, yet ridiculously lavish executive. At one point he won't allow an acquired company to subsidize employee transportation to work, yet later insists it subsidize his own by maintaining a corporate jet. Unfortunately she never addresses the question: how can Weill demand his troops run such an efficient operation while paying himself so exorbitantly? Other, similar paradoxes also emerge which suggest Weill is a very complex individual. But the author never treats him as such.
In the last analysis her book is a patchwork of news articles that discuss different chapter's of Weill's life and career. To sew the articles together into a coherent story, the author suggests that Weill's stunning ascent is driven by his simple desire to be accepted by the WASPy Wall Street powerbrokers who won't let a Jew join their club. Perhaps that is the overarching goal that has driven Weill for the past 40 years. But it raises interesting questions that the author doesn't address.
I'm a Jew in finance and Jews have been very well-represented on Wall Street for some time now. Weill is presented as having been driven to create Citigroup by his notion that he was still being excluded from the WASPy Wall Street club. But by this point we're into the nineties and any exclusive WASPy club had long since been abolished. So all of a sudden Weill comes off as pathologically insecure, which is intriguing. But the author doesn't elaborate.
This is a good book if you want a run down of Sandy Weill's career. No other author has compiled so much information about the man in one place. But all that information confirms that Weill himself is a very complex man; to do her complex subject justice, the author would have had to do much more with this book.
Rating:
Summary: AWESOME BOOK ABOUT WALLSTREET
Review: This book is great!!!!! I haven't finished it yet but I am glued to the pages..taking about the ascent of a brooklyn kid. Sandy is human and has every flaw but it talks about business and no bull..... it's not one of those sugared biographies. It talks about the strong personalities in wallstreet and also building great businesses. I thoroughly recommend it as required reading.
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