Anyone wanting to experience at first hand the different styles of Sandy Weill, chairman of Travelers, and John Reed, chairman of Citicorp, could have done worse than attend the annual stockholders' meetings of the two companies, held on consecutive days in late April in New York: their last before the two companies merge later this year to become Citigroup.
Citicorp held its meeting in an auditorium in its own headquarters at 399 Park Avenue. It was a low-key, almost dull, affair for a company that had just surprised the financial world by announcing the largest merger in history. Reed himself conducted the formalities with confidence and polish enough, introducing the board directors up for re-election who were seated in the front rows of the auditorium and who stood and turned briefly to the audience.
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For most of the meeting, he deflected with politeness, restraint and the odd flash of humour the cranks and pontificating self-publicists who attend these affairs in the US.