Weill Book is 'Real Deal'

For his second act, Weill took a small consumer-finance company, Commercial Credit, and in the next 20 years, acquired Primerica (including Smith Barney and A.L. Williams insurance brokerage), Travelers Group (the red umbrella), Aetna's property and casualty business, and then Salomon Brothers.

Finally, in October of 1998, Weill pulled off the biggest deal of all -- the $60 billion dollar "merger of equals" with the venerable global banking company Citicorp.

Weill's tale of how the deal was struck in only weeks by a small group of top executives is a fascinating one -- including how the new name, Citigroup, and the logo using that red umbrella were created just in time to break the news -- first to President Clinton, and then to Wall Street and the world.

This time around, Weill was the survivor of the merged company, as co-CEO John Reed, the Citibanker, was subsequently forced by the board to bow out. But the story doesn't end there.

Along came Sept. 11, 2001, and then Enron and Worldcom and the revelations of Wall Street excess.

Weill details how he attempted to get ahead of the scandals by introducing new corporate-governance practices. But Citigroup security analyst Jack Grubman dragged the firm's name -- and Weill's -- into the Elliot Spitzer fray in 2002.