Sidney James Weinberg, Sr.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_James_Weinberg
• https://www.nytimes.com/1969/07/24/archives/sidney-j-weinberg-dies-...
• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/254357895/sidney-james-weinberg

Weinberg was a long-time leader of the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs, nicknamed “Mr. Wall Street” by The New York Times and "director's director" by Fortune magazine. In a rags-to-riches story, he rose from a janitor's assistant, making $3/week, to CEO.

Early Life

Weinberg's background contrasted sharply with that of the traditional Ivy League Wall Streeter. Weinberg was one of eleven children of a Jewish wholesale liquor dealer. His family were active members of Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes in Brooklyn, joining when the synagogue was on Boerum Place, and remaining with it when it moved to Cobble Hill. Sidney's mother, Sophie, was sisterhood president from 1912 to 1913, his father, Pincus, served as president from 1919 to 1921, and the children all attended the Sunday school and Talmud Torah. Sidney married Helen W. Livingston there in 1920.

Weinberg dropped out of junior high school at P.S. 13, but got a letter of recommendation from one of his teachers to enter the job market.

Career at Goldman Sachs

Weinberg started with Goldman Sachs as a $3/week janitor's assistant, where his responsibilities included brushing the firm’s partners’ hats and wiping the mud from their overshoes. The grandson of the firm’s founder, Paul J. Sachs, liked Weinberg, and promoted him to the mailroom, which Weinberg reorganized. To improve Weinberg's penmanship, Sachs sent him to Brooklyn's Browne's Business College.

Weinberg did a stint in the U.S. Navy in World War I, and afterwards became a securities trader. Goldman Sachs bought Weinberg a seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1925.

Weinberg became a Goldman Sachs partner in 1927 and helped run the investment trusts, including Goldman Sachs Trading Corp. He co-ran the division with Waddill Catchings, who shriveled the market value of Goldman Sachs Trading Corp. from $500 million to less than $10 million. At this point, Weinberg took over the division, and became a senior partner in 1930. He became head of the firm in 1930, saving it from bankruptcy, and held that position until his death in 1969.

Public Service

Weinberg befriended Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 while working as a member of the Democratic Party’s National Campaign Finance Committee, and fund-raised more successfully than any other member. Since many on Wall Street had opposed Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election, Weinberg stood out as a prime candidate for the new president’s liaison to Wall Street. Indeed, in 1933, Roosevelt assigned Weinberg the task of organizing a group of corporate executives- called the Business Advisory and Planning Council – to serve as a bridge between the government and the private sector during the economic upheaval of the New Deal. Weinberg handpicked executives with whom he wanted to develop business relationships, and deliberately invited no other investment bankers to join the Council, putting himself in the perfect position to network. Roosevelt admired Weinberg’s work greatly, nicknaming him “The Politician” and offering him numerous federal appointments, all of which Weinberg refused.

When the United States entered World War II in 1941, Weinberg played an active role in engaging America’s private sector to overcome the nation’s considerable financial, industrial, and organizational challenges. Weinberg repeatedly proclaimed, “government service is the highest form of citizenship,” and, “I’ll never take a job in government in peacetime, but I’ll take any job in time of war.” Following Weinberg’s success recruiting corporate talent for the Business Advisory and Planning Council,

President Roosevelt entrusted Weinberg with an even more important mandate: forming the Industry Advisory Committee under the War Production Board’s Chairman, Donald M. Nelson.

Weinberg personally met with the CEOs of America’s top corporations and told them:

“Our nation is in grave danger. America needs an enormous number of talented executive leaders to organize a massive war production effort. The President has sent me here to get your help in identifying your very best young men. We need the smartest young stars you’ve got. And don’t even think of passing off older men or second-raters. I’m asking the same thing of every major company in the country, and I’ll be watching very closely how well your men do compared to the best young men from all the other corporation. God forbid the people you pick are less than the best because God, President Roosevelt, and I would never, ever forgive you.”

In 1942, Weinberg was promoted to the position of assistant to the chairman of the War Production Board. General Motors CEO Charles Erwin Wilson said of Weinberg’s service during this period: “His wide and influential friendships were invaluable in inducing outstanding men to come to Washington with us.”

Ford

Weinberg’s position on the War Production Board helped him to forge close personal relationships with many of America’s top young businessmen. When the war ended, many of these executives hired Weinberg as their investment banker, thereby boosting the prestige of Goldman Sachs’ client engagements. Many executives invited Weinberg to join their own companies’ boards. Weinberg served on the boards of many of America’s leading blue chip companies, including those of Ford Motor Company, General Electric, Sears Roebuck, Continental Can, National Dairy Products Corporation, B.F. Goodrich Company, and General Foods Corporation.

Perhaps Weinberg’s most important relationship from the War Production Board was with Henry Ford II, the eldest grandson of Henry Ford I. Following the death of his father Edsel Ford in 1943, Henry Ford II soon became president of Ford Motor Company – at that time America’s largest private corporation. While enormous, Ford Motor Company faced considerable financial and strategic challenges transitioning from military manufacturing to a peacetime economy. Weinberg helped Ford to recruit a group of new executives including Ernie Breech and Theodore O. Yntema to revitalize the struggling automobile company. In return for Weinberg’s advice, Ford chose Weinberg to lead the underwriting syndicate for Ford Motor Company’s 1956 initial public offering. The Ford IPO was the largest the United States had ever seen, raising nearly seven hundred million dollars (roughly five billion dollars in today’s terms), and considerably promoting Goldman Sachs’ position on Wall Street as a top investment bank.

Political Influence

While a lifelong fundraiser for the Democratic Party, Weinberg supported the Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1952 presidential bid; Weinberg’s campaigning efforts were critical to gathering support for Eisenhower among the business community. In return for Weinberg’s backing, Eisenhower appointed several of Weinberg’s recommendations to important cabinet positions, including George M. Humphrey of M.A. Hanna Company for Treasury Secretary; Charles Erwin Wilson of General Motors for Secretary of Defense; and Robert Ten Broeck Stevens of J.P. Stevens & Co. for Secretary of the Army. Likewise, after Weinberg helped Lyndon B. Johnson win the presidency in 1964, Johnson appointed Weinberg’s recommendations of John T. Connor for Secretary of Commerce and Henry H. Fowler for Secretary of the Treasury.

Family

Weinberg had two children, John Livingston Weinberg and Sidney J. "Jim" Weinberg, Jr., both of whom were partners of Goldman Sachs. His grandson Peter Weinberg was the company's head of European business before becoming a partner in a boutique investment bank.

References

1. WEDDINGS; Elizabeth Smith, Richard Berlin Jr. (Dec. 20, 1998) < nytimes.com

She is a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney James Weinberg Jr. of Marion, Massachusetts. The bride's father is a limited partner in Goldman Sachs & Company, the New York investment bank. The bride's paternal grandfather, the late Sidney James Weinberg, was its chairman from 1930 to 1969. Her maternal grandfather, the late Amory Houghton, was the chairman of Corning Glass Works and the U.S. Ambassador to France from 1957 to 1961.

Mr. Wall Street. Born in 1891 in New York, Sidney J. Weinberg began working at an early age, delivering feathers for a millinery business and acting as a messenger for investment firms before joining Goldman Sachs at the age of 16 in November 1907 just as the financial panic of 1907 subsided.

Starting at US $5 per week as an assistant to the janitor — a role whose responsibilities included cleaning spittoons — Weinberg quickly gained notice within the firm for his drive and initiative. He soon became head of the mailroom and caught the attention of Paul Sachs with a complete plan for its reorganization.

Recognizing Weinberg's raw talent and charisma, Sachs became an early champion of his career at Goldman Sachs. In fact, Sachs later paid the tuition for Weinberg's first investment banking course in New York University and continued to mentor him in building a successful career with the firm.

Weinberg's Horatio Alger story led him from the lowest position at Goldman Sachs to becoming one of the most powerful men on Wall Street. He rose to senior partner of Goldman Sachs in 1930; held 35 directorships in companies including Ford, General Electric, Sears, National Dairy Products (now Kraft), and B. F. Goodrich; and was advisor to five US presidents. Over the course of his career until his death in 1969, Sidney Weinberg displayed in his office the brass spittoon he polished in his first job at Goldman Sachs.

Good profile at http://www.anb.org/articles/10/10-02276.html

Weinberg's background contrasted sharply with that of the traditional Ivy League Wall Streeter. Weinberg was one of eleven children of a wholesale liquor dealer and never got farther than P.S. 13. His family were active members of Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes in Brooklyn, joining when the synagogue was on Beorum Place, and remaining with it when it moved to Cobble Hill. Sidney's mother, Sophie, was sisterhood president from 1912 to 1913, his father, Pincus, served as president from 1919 to 1921, and the children all attended the Sunday school and Talmud Torah. Sidney married Helen W. Livingston there in 1920.

Weinberg started with Goldman Sachs as a $3-a-week porter's assistant. After a World War I stint in the Navy, he became a securities trader. He became a Goldman Sachs partner in 1927 and helped run the investment trusts, including Goldman, Sachs Trading Corp. The share price fell from $232 to $2 after the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Weinberg became head of the firm in 1930, saving it from bankruptcy, and held that position until his death in 1969.

Weinberg had two children, John Livingston Weinberg and Sidney J. "Jim" Weinberg, Jr.

From http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,864550,00.html :

THE Wall Streeter whose advice is most often sought by U.S. businessmen is Sidney J. Weinberg, 67, who now has the oracle's seat once occupied by Bernard Baruch. As a senior partner of Goldman, Sachs & Co., one of The Street's top ten banking houses, Weinberg has won an enviable reputation as an underwriter skilled at judging the new issue market just right. His most recent success was selling $350 million of Sears, Roebuck debentures—history's biggest debt offering—in a bond market so soggy that some underwriters doubted the issue could be marketed at all; Weinberg did it by offering the issue at a price to yield 4.75%, slightly above comparable issues.

Weinberg is less well known as an expert on the stock market. Last May he advised one and all to buy; last week he said that the market was too high: "Some stocks are selling at 50 and 60 times earnings. You just can't do that. Weinberg's reputation extends far beyond Wall Street. He has served as a director of so many companies (General Electric, General Foods, Continental Can, Ford, B. F. Goodrich) that he thumbs through a notebook to see on which of 35 boards he still serves. Weinberg has a third field of distinction: adviser to governments. He achieved such success as a talent recruiter during World War II and Korea that he became known as "the body snatcher." He has the rare ability of turning a business relationship into an abiding friendship ("because I put friendship first"), has thus found himself with a huge number of friends who send him business, ask him to keep an eye open for new talent or for new jobs and, upon almost every occasion, seek his advice.

WEINBERG'S slum background contrasts so sharply with that of the traditional Ivy League Wall Streeter that he uses it as an asset, plays up his Brooklyn background ("I'm just a dumb guy from P.S. 13"). One of eleven children of a wholesale liquor dealer, he never got farther than P.S. 13, started with Goldman. Sachs as a $3-a-week porter's assistant. After a World War I stint in the Navy, he became a securities trader, a Goldman, Sachs partner in 1927, helped to run investment trusts, including Goldman, Sachs Trading Corp., which proved to be a disaster. It fell from $232 to $2 after the 1929 crash. "Boy," says Weinberg, "that was a lesson."

As he began to take over directorships held by Goldman, Sachs, he learned another lesson. He was on the board of McKesson & Robbins when President F. Donald Coster defrauded the firm of millions, and killed himself. After that, Weinberg kept close tabs on every corporation for which he was a board member, built a reputation as an invaluable addition to any board. In 1946, General Electric had mapped an expansion program of several hundred million dollars, and President Charles E. Wilson was not sure how his board would react. His worries vanished when Weinberg supported the plans with hard facts and figures. Said Wilson: "Sidney had done his homework, and that was all I needed."

WEINBERG'S network of friends served him well during World War II, when he worked as a mobilizer for Donald Nelson, persuaded dozens of top businessmen to take Washington jobs, including "Electric Charlie" Wilson, G. Keith Funston and Ralph Cordiner, on his plea that "Government service is the highest form of citizenship." Since then, Weinberg has nudged George Humphrey, Neil McElroy and many others into Government service. He has achieved the status of a de luxe one-man employment agency. "There is a guy waiting outside right now," he told a recent visitor, "who is president of a multimillion-dollar company. He's thinking of leaving, and wants to know if I've heard of anything for him."

Though he has amassed a fortune, estimated at between $2,000,000 and $5,000,000, Weinberg lives relatively simply, still commutes from the Westchester County (Scarsdale) house that he and his wife bought in 1923. He has two sons, one a partner in Goldman, Sachs and the other an executive at Owens-Corning Fiberglas. His chief recreation is his work; he shows only slight signs of slackening his pace. Says Weinberg, who takes only an occasional cocktail: "My grandfather drank half a pint of whisky a day and lived to be 90. Maybe at 75 I'll try that."

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