New York – It was supposed to be Citigroup’s annual meeting, and, indeed, the shareholders re-elected the board of directors and voted some resolutions up or down.
But in fact, the gathering Tuesday at Carnegie Hall was really about saying goodbye to Sandy Weill, who ran his last meeting as chairman of the company he built over the past 20 years into the largest financial institution in America.
Shareholders gave Weill two standing ovations in the gilded concert hall, where the balcony was decked out with a blue banner with a message from his more than 300,000 employees that read simply, “Thank you, Sandy!”
At times fighting back tears, Weill, 73, said it was hard to leave the bank because “the people in Citigroup are really our best friends … (who) worked together, had a common vision, built something together.”
Still, Weill won’t be going far from Citigroup Inc., which is based in New York. The board has given him the title of chairman emeritus, and it was disclosed at the meeting that he plans to serve as an adviser to his successor, chairman and chief executive Charles Prince, for the next decade.
Weill said he and his wife, Joan, would be “spending our time in the philanthropic world.”
