| Walter B. Wriston |
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PERSONAL INFORMATION Walter Bigelow Wriston was born in Middletown, Connecticut to Ruth Bigelow Wriston, a chemistry teacher, and Henry Merritt Wriston , a history professor at Wesleyan University and later president of Lawrence College ( 1925 -1937) and Brown University (1937- 1955 ). Reared as a traditional Methodist in Wisconsin , Wriston was not allowed to listen to the radio or go to the movie theater on Sundays. He received a Bachelor Of Arts degree from Wesleyan in 1941 and a Master's Degree from Tufts University 's Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy in 1942 . After graduate school, Wriston became a junior Foreign Service officer at the State Department in which he helped negotiate the exchange of Japanese Interned in the United States for Americans held prisoner in Japan . He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942 and served in the Signal Corps on Cebu in the Philippines . In 1942, Walter Wriston married his first wife, Barbara Brengle Wriston, with whom he had one daughter. Two years after Barbara’s death in 1966, he married lawyer and businesswoman Kathryn Dineen. He kept himself trim, playing tennis regularly and acting as a carpenter, electrician, plumber, backhoe operator, front-end loader operator and chain-saw-wielding tree farmer on his Connecticut retreat. During the July 1977 New York City blackout, he walked down 23 flights from his high-rise apartment, hiked to corporate headquarters, then climbed 15 flights to his office. BANKING Immediately after World War II in 1946 , Wriston entered the banking sector as a junior inspector in the Comptroller 's division at the First National City Bank (which would later be known as Citicorp ). Wriston's ascended quickly within the Bank, becoming head of the overseas division in 1959 . As a close adviser to then chairman James Stillman Rockefeller , Wriston became executive vice-president in 1960 , and chief executive of Citibank in 1967 . In 1968 Wriston became the first leader of Citicorp, a Holding Company that took ownership of Citibank. Since the holding company was not subject to the same laws as the banks, the holding corporation was able to expand into services such as property, Mortgage s and Consumer Credit . He divided the operation into five sections: personal banking; commercial banking; a corporate division to serve large businesses, multinationals, governments and institutions; an international division - which Wriston greatly expanded - to look after the hundreds of Citibank branches around the world; and an investment mangement group. In London , Citibank was a pioneer of the Eurodollar lending market and the financing of North Sea Oil ; it was one of the first banks to manage large corporate relationships on a global basis employing industry experts for each sector. These activities generated demands for greater Regulation , but Wriston insisted that "legislation that hobbles the service efforts of the commercial banks must hobble the economic growth of the country and the world." Under his leadership, Citibank pioneered Automatic Teller Machine s. It pursued the Credit Card business in a way that no other bank was doing at the time. He constantly battered government regulations. He expanded internationally at a dizzying pace. Old constraints on banks were consigned to the dustbin of history. Wriston made what is now called Citigroup the world's leading financial institution. Because he was not risk-averse, he made his share of mistakes. But these were minute compared to his monumental achievements. During Wriston's tenure, Citibank developed the Certificate Of Deposit (CD), which yielded higher rates of return to corporations than to individuals. One of his innovations was signing up with the fledgling MasterCard operation (then called Master Charge ) in 1969 . Citibank mailed out 20 million cards nationwide and lost $1 billion before it turned a profit. The problem was that the rate of Inflation exceeded the amount of interest Citibank was allowed to charge its credit card customers under New York Usury laws. Mr. Wriston eventually moved the credit card operation to South Dakota , where there was no usury law limit. During his tenure, Citicorp experienced dramatic growth, with its assets increasing to $150.6 billion; its loan growth reached $102.7 billion. Citicorp is now known as Citigroup Inc, and is the world's largest bank. POLITICS In 1987 , the Manhattan Institute initiated a lecture series in honor of Mr. Wriston. From 1982 to 1989 , he was chairman of President Ronald Reagan 's Economic Policy Advisory Board , and recently, President Bush gave him the Presidential Medal Of Freedom , the nation's highest civil honor. He said he was twice offered the job of Treasury Secretary , in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He turned down the offers but said it was not because of the public scrutiny he was sure to face. "I've been living in Macy's window for 20 years," he said. QUOTES
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