Walter Bigelow Wriston (August 3, 1919 – January 19, 2005) was a banker and former chairman and CEO of Citicorp. As chief executive of Citibank / Citicorp (later Citigroup) from 1967 to 1984, Wriston was widely regarded as the single most influential commercial banker of his time.[2][3]
During his tenure as CEO, the bank introduced, among other innovations, automated teller machines, interstate banking, the negotiable certificate of deposit, and "pursued the credit card business in a way that no other bank was doing at the time".[4][5] With then New York Governor Hugh Carey and investment banker Felix Rohatyn, Wriston helped save New York City from bankruptcy in the mid-1970s by setting up the Financial Control Board and the Municipal Assistance Corporation, and persuading the city's union pension funds and banks to buy the latter corporation's bonds.[6]
After graduate school, Wriston became a junior Foreign Service officer at the State Department, where he helped negotiate the exchange of Japanese interned in the United States for Americans held prisoner in Japan. Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942, he served in the U.S. Army for four years, being with the Signal Corps on Cebu in the Philippines during his service.
Career
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Politics
Wriston was an opponent of John F. Kennedy, stating "Who is this upstart President interfering with the free flow of capital?".[10]
Wriston was twice offered the job of Secretary of the Treasury, once by Richard Nixon and once by Gerald Ford, but turned down both offers.[2] One report is that Wriston declined the offers because these were not made to him personally by the then-President. Wriston also would have had to take a substantial pay cut had he accepted the government position.
In 1942, Walter Wriston married Barbara Brengle, with whom he had one daughter. Two years after her death in 1966, he married lawyer and businesswoman Kathryn Dineen.
Wriston's papers, including the text of hundreds of speeches and articles spanning his lengthy career, are at Tufts University's Archives. Many have been digitized and are available in the Tufts Digital Library.[15]
Quotes
Capital goes where it's welcome and stays where it's well treated.
Information about money has become almost as important as money itself
Countries don't go bust
The 800 number and the piece of plastic have made time and space obsolete
The Eurodollar market exists in London because people believe that the British government is not about to close it down
It is inconceivable that any major bank would walk away from any subsidiary of its holding company. If your name is on the door, all of your capital funds are going to be behind it in the real world. Lawyers can say you have separation, but the marketplace is persuasive, and it would not see it that way.[16]
^Financial Institutions Restructuring and Services Act of 1981, Hearings on S. 1686, S. 1703, S.
1720 and S. 1721, before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, 97th Congress, 1st Session, Part 11, pp. 589-590.