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Weill, who has owned a home in Greenwich, turns 83 on Wednesday. The banker, financier and philanthropist was born March 16, 1933, in New York City.
Weill got his first job on Wall Street in 1955 – as a runner for Bear Stearns. In 1956, he became a licensed broker there.
Together with Arthur L. Carter, Roger Berlind and Peter Potoma, he formed Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill in May 1960. Later, the firm became Carter, Berlind & Weill in 1962. He served as its chairman from 1965 to 1984, a period in which it completed more than 15 acquisitions to become the country’s second largest securities brokerage firm.
In 1982, he founded the National Academy Foundation with the Academy of Finance to educate students who would graduate from high school.
He began serving as president of American Express Co. in 1983 and as chairman and CEO of American Express's insurance subsidiary, Fireman's Fund Insurance Co., in 1984.
He acquired Gulf Insurance in 1987, Drexel Burnham Lambert's retail brokerage outlets in 1989. In 1993, he reacquired his old Shearson brokerage from American Express for $1.2 billion.
He completely took over Travelers Corp. in a $4 billion stock deal and officially began calling his corporation Travelers Group Inc.
In September 1997, he acquired Salomon Inc., parent company of Salomon Brothers Inc. for more than $9 billion in stock.
In 1998, he was the recipient of Financial World Magazine’s CEO of the Year Award and received the same honor from Chief Executive Magazine in 2002.
In 2001, he became a Class A director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He served as a Cornell Trustee for many years, and in 1998 he endowed Cornell's medical school, now known as the Weill Cornell Medical College.
The Weills are recipients of the 2009 Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy Award.
In 2012, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He also serves on the Board of Governors of Sidra, a 380-bed Specialty Teaching Hospital that will open this year in Qatar.
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