remembers Calvano. “It was, ‘This is gonna be just us guys and girls, and we’ll get it done the right way.’ It was very appealing, especially for those who came from American Express, which was almost Byzantine in its political nature. If you were ambitious yourself, and you wanted to do something, why not do it with Sandy?”
(Early on, Dimon suggested a board candidate to Weill: Andrall Pearson, whom he’d met through Pearson’s daughter, a classmate of Dimon’sat Harvard. Pearson, who was later the founding chairman of Pepsi’s spin-off Yum! Brands—owner of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell—would be another mentor to Dimon over the next 20 years. Like Dimon, Pearson was a twin. But he one-upped Dimon on that front—he and his identical twin brother, Richard, actually married another set of identical twins.)
The New Yorkers flew to Baltimore every Monday on the 7:10 A.M . flight on Piedmont Airlines out of La Guardia—a 35-minute flight—and stayed in Baltimore until Friday, when they returned home. Weill and Dimon took up residence in the luxury Harbor Court hotel, with Dimon occupying the room across the hallway from Weill’s suite. Fowler took a room next door, and the three men walked to work together each day. Dimon’s mornings usually began when he smelled Weill’s cigar smoke seeping underneath his door, and his days ended when he watched Weill smoke a final cigar after dinner.
Although a number of other executives stayed in an apartment close to Commercial Credit’s 18-story glass-and-aluminum edifice at 300 St. Paul Place, there was an unwritten rule that if you were in town and did not have some other business engagement, you ate dinner at 7:30 P.M . with Weill in a private room in the Harbor Court’s restaurant. “Sandy has that kind of food fetish where he likes to order the appetizers,” recalls Calvano. “He’ll order your meal for you if you’re not careful—so it became good practice to have something to do at night. Otherwise, you’d have to go eat those damn crab cakes every day of the week.” On other nights, the “dirty dozen” as they called themselves, convened at the fancy Italian restaurant Marconi’s. On seeing Weill walk in, the staff would plunk a bottle of Tanqueray gin on the table. Weill liked his Gibson before dinner.
They worked long hours, sometimes 12 to 14 hours a day. Bob Willumstad, who was helping transform the company’s branch network with Lipp and Calvano, thinks they got done in six months what might have taken a year—and although it was exhausting, it was also exhilarating. “It was great fun,” recalls Bob Lipp. “I often look back at those few years, the likes of which I’ve never experienced again. It was like going to war without getting shot at.”
They made quick work of Commercial Credit’s balance sheet; Dimon took the lead when it came to making the numbers work. In early 1987, they sold the company’s car leasing business for $77 million plus assumption of $250 million in liabilities. They stopped making loans to kibbutzim in Israel—no one was ever sure why the company had made these loans in the first place—and curtailed all business loans. Slowly but surely, Weill and his team refocused the company on its core business of consumer finance. And the results showed. For the full year, the company earned $100 million and had an impressive 18 percent return on equity. The credit agencies had upgraded the company’s debt rating from BB+ at the time of the takeover to A- a year later, and Commercial Credit was able to tap the debt markets to the tune of $100 million. In 1988, they kept going. They sold American Credit Indemnity, which insured accounts receivable for corporate clients, to Dun & Brad-street for $140 million.
Weill did away with perks for most of the company’s management ranks. He canceled all newspaper subscriptions, sending out the message that if employees wanted to read the
Wall Street Journal
, they could
(Early on, Dimon suggested a board candidate to Weill: Andrall Pearson, whom he’d met through Pearson’s daughter, a classmate of Dimon’sat Harvard. Pearson, who was later the founding chairman of Pepsi’s spin-off Yum! Brands—owner of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell—would be another mentor to Dimon over the next 20 years. Like Dimon, Pearson was a twin. But he one-upped Dimon on that front—he and his identical twin brother, Richard, actually married another set of identical twins.)
The New Yorkers flew to Baltimore every Monday on the 7:10 A.M . flight on Piedmont Airlines out of La Guardia—a 35-minute flight—and stayed in Baltimore until Friday, when they returned home. Weill and Dimon took up residence in the luxury Harbor Court hotel, with Dimon occupying the room across the hallway from Weill’s suite. Fowler took a room next door, and the three men walked to work together each day. Dimon’s mornings usually began when he smelled Weill’s cigar smoke seeping underneath his door, and his days ended when he watched Weill smoke a final cigar after dinner.
Although a number of other executives stayed in an apartment close to Commercial Credit’s 18-story glass-and-aluminum edifice at 300 St. Paul Place, there was an unwritten rule that if you were in town and did not have some other business engagement, you ate dinner at 7:30 P.M . with Weill in a private room in the Harbor Court’s restaurant. “Sandy has that kind of food fetish where he likes to order the appetizers,” recalls Calvano. “He’ll order your meal for you if you’re not careful—so it became good practice to have something to do at night. Otherwise, you’d have to go eat those damn crab cakes every day of the week.” On other nights, the “dirty dozen” as they called themselves, convened at the fancy Italian restaurant Marconi’s. On seeing Weill walk in, the staff would plunk a bottle of Tanqueray gin on the table. Weill liked his Gibson before dinner.
They worked long hours, sometimes 12 to 14 hours a day. Bob Willumstad, who was helping transform the company’s branch network with Lipp and Calvano, thinks they got done in six months what might have taken a year—and although it was exhausting, it was also exhilarating. “It was great fun,” recalls Bob Lipp. “I often look back at those few years, the likes of which I’ve never experienced again. It was like going to war without getting shot at.”
They made quick work of Commercial Credit’s balance sheet; Dimon took the lead when it came to making the numbers work. In early 1987, they sold the company’s car leasing business for $77 million plus assumption of $250 million in liabilities. They stopped making loans to kibbutzim in Israel—no one was ever sure why the company had made these loans in the first place—and curtailed all business loans. Slowly but surely, Weill and his team refocused the company on its core business of consumer finance. And the results showed. For the full year, the company earned $100 million and had an impressive 18 percent return on equity. The credit agencies had upgraded the company’s debt rating from BB+ at the time of the takeover to A- a year later, and Commercial Credit was able to tap the debt markets to the tune of $100 million. In 1988, they kept going. They sold American Credit Indemnity, which insured accounts receivable for corporate clients, to Dun & Brad-street for $140 million.
Weill did away with perks for most of the company’s management ranks. He canceled all newspaper subscriptions, sending out the message that if employees wanted to read the
Wall Street Journal
, they could
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