Sandy Weill Net Worth | Celebrity Net Worth

What Is Sandy Weill’s Net Worth?

Sandy Weill is an American banker, financier, and philanthropist who has a net worth of $1 billion. From 1998 to 2003, Sandy Weill was a chief executive at Citigroup, and from 1998 until 2006, he was the chairman of the company. Weill graduated from Cornell University and got his first job on Wall Street in 1955 with Bear Stearns. After starting out as a runner, he became a licensed broker. In 1960, he co-founded the firm Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill, which eventually became Shearson Loeb Rhoades. Sandy sold the company to American Express in 1981 for around $930 million in stock. He served as president of American Express Co. In 1986, he invested $7 million of his own money and became CEO of Commercial Credit. He paid $1.5 billion for Primerica in 1987 and paid $722 million for a 27% share of Travelers Insurance in 1992. As a philanthropist, Weill has donated millions of dollars to education, music, and medicine. In 1997, he received the American Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award.

Early Life

Sandy Weill was born Sanford I. Weill on March 16, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York City. He is the son of Polish Jewish immigrants Max and Etta Weill. Sandy attended P.S. 200 for elementary school, followed by Peekskill Military Academy in upstate New York. He later enrolled at Cornell University, where he was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity and the U.S. Air Force ROTC. Weill earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in government in 1955. Sandy has said that his middle initial isn’t an abbreviation for anything, stating, “My mother wanted to name me after somebody whose name started with an ‘I,’ but she couldn’t think of a name she liked. So she gave me the initial with the idea that after I was 21 I could choose whatever middle name I wanted.”

Career

In 1955, Weill landed his first Wall Street job and began working as a runner for Bear Stearns. The following year, he became a licensed broker at the company. Sandy discovered that he was more comfortable reading financial statements companies made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission than he was calling or visiting clients, and his mother was his only client until his future wife, Joan, convinced an ex-boyfriend to open a brokerage account. During his time at Bear Stearns, one of Weill’s neighbors,  Arthur L. Carter, worked at Lehman Brothers. In May 1960, Weill and Carter teamed up to form Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill with Peter Potoma and Roger Berlind, and in 1962, the firm changed its name to Carter, Berlind & Weill due to the New York Stock Exchange bringing disciplinary proceedings against Potoma. Carter left in 1968, and the firm became Cogan, Berlind, Weill & Levitt after Marshall Cogan and Arthur Levitt joined. From 1965 to 1984, Sandy was the firm’s Chairman, and during that period, it completed more than 15 acquisitions and became the second-largest securities brokerage firm in the country. The firm has also been called CBWL-Hayden, Stone, Inc., Hayden Stone, Inc., Shearson Hayden Stone, and Shearson Loeb Rhoades.

Sandy sold Shearson Loeb Rhoades to American Express in 1981 for approximately $915 million in stock. In 1982, he collaborated with the Academy of Finance to form the National Academy Foundation. In 1983, Weill became the president of American Express Co., and in 1984, he began serving as the chairman and CEO of Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company, American Express’s insurance subsidiary. In August 1985, he resigned from American Express. He persuaded Control Data Corporation to spin off Commercial Credit, a troubled subsidiary, and he purchased Commercial Credit for $7 million in 1986. Sandy acquired Gulf Insurance in 1987, Primerica in 1988, and Drexel Burnham Lambert’s retail brokerage outlets in 1989. In 1992, he bought a 27% share of Travelers Insurance for $722 million and later took the company over in a $4 million stock deal (renaming it Travelers Group), and in 1993, he paid American Express $1.2 billion for his old Shearson brokerage. In 1998, Travelers Group entered into a $76 billion merger with Citicorp. Weill was named CEO of the Year by “Financial World” magazine in 1998 and “Chief Executive” magazine in 2002. In 2001, he became a Class A director of the United States Federal Reserve system’s Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In 2003, Sandy sold 5.6 million shares of Citigroup stock for nearly $264 million and became semi-retired. He remained a member of the Citigroup board of directors until 2006.

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Personal Life and Philanthropy

Sandy married Joan Mosher on June 20, 1955. He is passionate about philanthropy, and in 1998, he endowed the medical school at his alma mater, Cornell. Sandy serves as Weill Cornell Medical College’s chairman of the Board of Overseers, and he is a Cornell Trustee and an emeritus member of the university’s Board of Trustees. He and Joan have donated at least $250 million to Cornell. In 2007, Sandy endowed Cornell’s Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology, which is located in Weill Hall. In 2013, the Weill Family Foundation announced that they would be donating $100 million to Weill Cornell. In 1995, he became the chair of the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences. Sandy is a trustee of the Hospital for Special Surgery and New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and he is on the Executive Council of University of California at San Francisco Medical Center. In 2003, Weill was awarded the Baruch Medal for Business and Civic Leadership for his business accomplishments and his work in public education. In 1980, he collaborated with the New York City Board of Education to create the magnet school of the Academy of Finance. He founded the National Academy Foundation and serves as its chairman, and he was appointed to Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s New York Education Reform Commission.

Sandy has received honorary degrees from Hofstra University, The New School, Howard University,  the University of New Haven, and Sonoma State University. He is the chairman of the Carnegie Hall Board of Trustees, and one of the performance halls was renamed the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Recital Hall. In 1997, he was honored with the New York State Governor’s Art Award. He and Joan received the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy Award in 2009, and Sandy received the Carnegie Hall Medal of Excellence in 2015. Weill was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012. In 2016, the Weills announced a $185 million donation to the University of California at San Francisco to help pay for a new neuroscience institute, which became known as the Weill Institute for Neurosciences.

Real Estate

In 2007, Weill and his wife, Joan, purchased a penthouse at 15 Central Park West for $43.7 million. In 2011, they sold it for a then-record $88 million to a company associated with Ekaterina Rybolovleva, daughter of Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. The Weills pledged to donate the proceeds to charity. Additionally, in 2014, Weill sold a smaller unit in the same building—originally used as staff quarters—for $5.34 million, more than five times its 2007 purchase price.

In 2010, the Weills acquired a 362-acre estate in Sonoma Valley for approximately $31 million. The property includes a vineyard and a Tuscan-style main house, updated with the help of designer Mica Ertegun. The estate features artworks by Fernand Léger and Will Ryman. The Weills have been active in the local arts scene, donating $12 million to complete the Green Music Center at Sonoma State University.

Weill listed his 16,400-square-foot Greenwich estate for $14 million in 2014. The shingle-style mansion, designed by architect Ira Grandberg, sits on 6.3 acres and includes six bedrooms, nine full baths, a home theater, wine cellar, swimming pool, spa, and fitness room.

Beyond these notable transactions, the Weills have owned other properties, including a 120-acre estate in New York’s Adirondacks and a villa in the Bahamas. Their real estate activities often align with their philanthropic endeavors, supporting institutions like Carnegie Hall and Weill Cornell Medical College.