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Wriston: Walter Wriston, Citibank, and the Rise and Fall of American Financial Supremacy

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Wriston: Walter Wriston, Citibank, and the Rise and Fall of American Financial Supremacy

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Overview

Wriston is the definitive, inside story of the man who transformed Citibank into a global banking powerhouse—and led it to the edge of the abyss.

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ISBN-13:	9781625361417
Publisher:	PLZ Publishers
Publication date:	04/30/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	960
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Phillip L. Zweig is the author of Belly-Up: The Collapse of the Penn Square Bank (Crown 1985). He has written groundbreaking articles on banking, finance and healthcare for Business Week, Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal, American Banker and other major publications. Zweig has won the George Polk, Gerald Loeb, and John Hancock Awards for financial reporting. Wriston was a finalist in the 1996 Financial Times/Booz-Allen & Hamilton Global Business Book Awards. Zweig is married and lives in New York City.

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The son of a famous Midwestern academic, Wriston stumbled into the banking business shortly after returning from WWII, when he joined First National City in Manhattan. He was a major force in transforming not only National City but the entire American banking industry, from a heavily regulated, tradition-bound field into an aggressive player in international markets. A staunch believer in free markets, technology and overseas lending, Wriston oversaw the growth of National City into the first bank holding company, Citicorp, which has interests in a variety of financial areas. During his career, capped by a 17-year reign as CEO, there was virtually nothing that occurred in the world of banking-ranging from the bailouts of Mexico and New York City to the spread of banking deregulation and the use of credit cards-that Wriston and Citibank were not heavily involved with. Zweig (Bellyup: The Collapse of the Penn Square Bank) artfully blends Wriston's personal and business lives, along with the American banking scene in the 1940s through the mid-1980s, into a compelling story. Although there is more detail here about banking practices than the casual reader will care to know, this is an absorbing biography of one of the most influential men in recent banking history. Wriston and his family and friends were among Zweig's hundreds of sources. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Walter Wriston may not be known to the average person, but he has had a profound impact on American life. He headed Citibank, which pioneered many financial practices-e.g., automated teller machines (ATMs), certificates of deposit (CDs), and a wider availability of credit cards-that we take for granted today. Zweig (Belly Up: The Collapse of Penn Square Bank, 1984. o.p.) has written an exhaustive, overlong account of Wriston's life as well as a chronicle of the forces at work in the United States that would enable Citibank to become the largest and most powerful American bank in the world. The book also shows that the recent spate of banking consolidation and mergers was set in motion largely by what Wriston accomplished. While Citibank has been the subject of previous books (notably Richard B. Miller's Citicorp: The Story of a Bank in Crisis, LJ 4/15/93), this work is just about as authoritative and satisfying as one could hope for. Recommended for larger business collections.-Richard Drezen, Washington Post News Research Ctr., Washington, D.C.

Library Journal

Should anyone doubt the suggestion implied by Zweig's title, one need only consult the latest annual ranking of banks compiled by "The Banker", the respected British trade publication. Based on financial strength, the six top banks worldwide are Japanese. Citicorp, parent of the U.S. top-ranking Citibank, comes in ninth. Citicorp's problems have already been covered by Richard Miller in "Citicorp: The Story of" "a Bank in Crisis" (1993), but Zweig prodigiously reveals 30 years of the bank's history in his massive, sweeping portrait of one of this century's most important bankers. Wriston ran Citicorp for 17 years. He was an innovator who led the drive to automate banking and to deregulate the industry. With risky loans to developing countries, he also nearly brought about the bank's collapse. Zweig is a business writer and journalist who is now an editor at "Business Week". Ten years ago he wrote a similarly spectacular account of the banking industry, zeroing in on the failed Penn Square Bank in "Belly-Up".

David Rouse

A journalist's painstakingly thorough audit of Walter B. Wriston's stewardship at Citicorp, which he helped make into what is arguably the Global Village's most formidable and influential financial institution.
Business Week correspondent Zweig (Belly-Up, 1985) offers a tellingly detailed account of how the son of a prominent educator made an enduring name for himself as a world-class banker. Following WW II service Wriston (who turned 76 last year) joined New York's First National City (the predecessor of today's Citibank). At the time, American bankers were still a clubby, risk- averse, and parochial lot who set greater store by relationships than results. The strong-willed, entrepreneurial Wriston and like- minded contemporaries soon put paid to the status quo. Among other accomplishments, Wriston played a leading role in the creation of negotiable CDs at a time when high interest rates had curtailed the bank's access to the funds needed for loans; he also oversaw installation of the information-system infrastructure that has turned ATMs and other high-tech wonders into workaday tools of the banking trade. When he took over as CEO in mid-1967, Wriston publicly committed Citibank to achieve annual earnings growth of at least 15%. How he managed to do so in the face of oil shocks, Washington's erratic economic policy, close encounters with Ralph Nader, and other obstacles makes for a fascinating chronicle. If there were as many blunders as triumphs on Wriston's 17-year watch, he left an enduring legacy. Zweig provides no systematic commentary on the consolidation trend that has impelled commercial giants like Chase and Chemical to merge. He also offers more particulars on long-done deals and internal conflicts than most readers might want.
These cavils apart, an absorbing and judicious reckoning on an innovative banker who viewed the world as his capitalistic institution's oyster.

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