Sanford I. Weill Quotes

Other men have created FTSE 100 companies. But I believe no man has done this in his lifetime without acquisition or borrowing. My one regret is handing over the reigns.

I have been in Wall Street all of my life. I love it. It has been good to me. I know many wonderful, decent, honorable, ethical, hard-working people that were in Wall Street with me.

My friends and family are amazed I've done so well. I was not a model student. No one expected that I'd build a Fortune 500 company at Symantec.

In 1987, Merrill Lynch asked me to open a Swiss capital markets operation. I was 27. In hindsight, I was lucky enough to start a business from scratch. And I mean from zero - no offices, even, just a space with walls between different areas. We decided to tear down the walls.

I meet young people all the time who say something like, 'I want to work in venture capital.' And I can see why. Who wouldn't want to be smart, well-paid, dispense large sums of money, and tell people what to do?

We've dreamed of growing our company into something like Richard Childress has. We're working really hard, and we're getting more competitive. Hopefully, that becomes a reality.

I built a massive company, a great company, some of the greatest assets anywhere in the world, worth many, many billions of dollars.

My best decision was to choose to go to Wall Street over law. I learned a lot and focused on the expanding software industry at a time when the independent software industry was just beginning.

I always wanted to start a public company and make a lot of money.

I have never run a public company. I spent my entire life working for a private company.

Private equity does pay very well, and my counterparts, guys that I grew up with who are still working at a number of firms, all make a lot of money.

I think the greatest CEOs in the United States, business, anyway, are the ones you don't hear too much about.

If guys try to make a bigger company for the sake of size, they don't create value in most cases.

For seven years after college, I was a waitress at the Buttercup Bakery in Berkeley, and from there I got a job at Merrill Lynch as an account executive, from where I went to vice president of investments for Prudential-Bache Securities. I started my own firm in 1987.

Growing Ineos has been a lot of fun.

We can be certain that cities around the world will compete for the jobs that the next revival of the financial services industry will bring.

Steve Jobs was rare: a C.E.O. who actually had a huge impact on his company's fortunes. Contrary to corporate mythology, most C.E.O.s could be easily replaced, if not by your average Joe, then by your average executive vice-president. But Jobs genuinely earned the label of superstar.

I've been part of founding three companies that have gone public. It doesn't seem like a big number, but it's actually a lot.

But Wall Street people are in fact very smart; they're funny, they're not company men who work their way up the chain.

I decided I was going to go to Wall Street, and I was introduced to some people... I met a guy who knew a bond trader at Pressprich, and he got me to meet him and the guy that ran their sales department, Jack Collin.

Bankers are doing God’s Work!

The Ranbaxy acquisition doesn't preclude us from making more large acquisitions. The important issue is whether we have the management bandwidth to handle the acquisition.

Obama doesn't know how to invent the iPhone; he can't start a successful business. He's never really worked in a business except for the briefest of times.

After decades of studying the men and women that make the decision to open their own Great, Growing Company, I'd have to say it comes down to the Vision they have for that business - do they expect to build the company or just have some income for the short term?

In India, the investment banking industry is a little different. Overseas, the structures are very complicated, but not in India.