A Nice Guy from Brooklyn

To account for Sidney J. Weinberg's success by saying that he was a nice guy seems singularly naive. His achievements and influence were far too extraordinary for so simple an explanation. For decades he was Mr. Wall Street, the director's director, the master floater of securities issues, the headhunter who as Washington's top-dollar-a-year man brought hordes of high-powered executives to the capital to organize and run the World War II and Korean mobilization efforts. He served as informal financial adviser to five Presidents, from F.D.R. to L.B.J., and was at different times a big fund raiser for both parties. Throughout U.S. industry, scores of high executives owed their jobs to a Weinberg introduction or recommendation.

Yet when he died last week at 77, the best way that associates could find to explain his success was to note that he had an extraordinary ability to make people like and trust him. So they sought his advice, followed his call to Washington and, when they had new securities to market, brought them to him at Goldman, Sachs & Co., the investment banking house in which Weinberg was senior partner.

The Right Price. There was more, of course. He had a fine sense of the exact price to put on a new securities issue, just enough to tempt investors to buy. In the 1930s, when company boards usually did little but give ceremonious approval to management decisions, he popularized the role of the working director--demanding that management circulate agendas for board meetings and supply directors with figures to study in advance. In his career, he sat on the boards of more than 30 companies, including Ford, Sears, Goodrich, General Electric and General Foods.

Weinberg was the son of a Polish-born liquor dealer, and his formal education ended with graduation from P.S. 13 in Brooklyn. The short, bespectacled Jewish boy began his career during the Panic of 1907 by going to a Wall Street skyscraper, knocking on the door of every office and asking if the company needed help. When he got to the Goldman, Sachs office, he was taken on as a porter's assistant. A large part of his ability to win financiers' confidence was that he not only did not hide this background but even exploited the curiosity value it gave him on Wall Street. Until his death, he kept on display in his office the brass spittoon that he had supposedly polished as his first job at Goldman, Sachs.

Weinberg was noted for straightforward talk and a rapier wit that deflated his listeners without offending them.

According to Wall Street legend, the head of a rival firm once impressed directors of a company about to float a securities issue by bringing his father, a revered financier, to a sales presentation. Weinberg, tipped by telephone that he had better do something quickly, hurried to the meeting. His opening words: "I'm sorry, gentlemen. My father is dead.

But I have an uncle over in Brooklyn who is a tailor and who looks like him, and if that would mean anything to you I'd be glad to bring him over."

When the directors stopped laughing, Goldman, Sachs got the underwriting.

He was too busy with underwritings, Government work and innumerable directors' meetings to make as much money for himself as he could have. Estimates of his personal wealth ranged only up to $5 million--not much for the biggest little giant in Wall Street. Though his fame eventually grew to the point that Goldman, Sachs executives used to parade visitors to his office to show him off, Weinberg was a dedicated behind-the-scenes man. He lured top executives to Washington largely by telling them that serving their country was more important than anything else that they could do.

From someone else that might have sounded pretentious, but Weinberg's own insistence on working in Washington, nearly always without formal title or office, made it convincing. He declined many offers of highly visible Government jobs, including, after the 1936 election, one from Franklin Roosevelt to become ambassador to Russia. His explanation to friends: "I don't speak Russian --who the hell could I talk to over there?"

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