# Professor Roy Smith comments on Citigroup founder Sanford Weill's business legacy

1 Faculty News May 18, 2016 ![The New York Times Logo](/sites/default/files/styles/246w/public/assets/images/uat_027320.jpg?itok=W8xBr66g)>

Excerpt from [The New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/business/dealbook/sandy-weills-wine-country-retirement-with-notes-of-rue-and-chagrin.html?_r=0) -- "In his heyday in the 1990s, Mr. Weill was 'a Sun King — one of the most powerful and successful financial individuals in New York,' said [Roy Smith](http://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/roy-smith), a finance professor at New York University business school. Mr. Weill gained that status as a deal maker, with a series of ever-larger mergers culminating with Citicorp and the Travelers Group forming the behemoth Citigroup in 1998. The last deal helped knock down the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated banking from the riskier securities business."

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