THE Wall Streeter whose advice is most often sought by U.S. businessmen is Sidney J. Weinberg, 67, who now has the oracle's seat once occupied by Bernard Baruch. As a senior partner of Goldman, Sachs & Co., one of The Street's top ten banking houses, Weinberg has won an enviable reputation as an underwriter skilled at judging the new issue market just right. His most recent success was selling $350 million of Sears, Roebuck debentures—history's biggest debt offering—in a bond market so soggy that some underwriters doubted the issue could be marketed at all; Weinberg did it by offering the issue at a price to yield 4.75%, slightly above comparable issues.
Weinberg is less well known as an expert on the stock market. Last May he advised one and all to buy; last week he said that the market was too high: "Some stocks are selling at 50 and 60 times earnings. You just can't do that.'' Weinberg's reputation extends far beyond Wall Street. He has served as a director of so many companies (General Electric, General Foods, Continental Can, Ford, B. F. Goodrich) that he thumbs through a notebook to see on which of 35 boards he still serves. Weinberg has a third field of distinction: adviser to governments. He achieved such success as a talent recruiter during World War II and Korea that he became known as "the body snatcher." He has the rare ability of turning a business relationship into an abiding friendship ("because I put friendship first"), has thus found himself with a huge number of friends who send him business, ask him to keep an eye open for new talent or for new jobs and, upon almost every occasion, seek his advice.
WEINBERG'S slum background contrasts so sharply with that of the traditional Ivy League Wall Streeter that he uses it as an asset, plays up his Brooklyn background ("I'm just a dumb guy from P.S. 13"). One of eleven children of a wholesale liquor dealer, he never got farther than P.S. 13, started with Goldman. Sachs as a $3-a-week porter's assistant. After a World War I stint in the Navy, he became a securities trader, a Goldman, Sachs partner in 1927, helped to run investment trusts, including Goldman, Sachs Trading Corp., which proved to be a disaster. It fell from $232 to $2 after the 1929 crash. "Boy," says Weinberg, "that was a lesson."
As he began to take over directorships held by Goldman, Sachs, he learned another lesson. He was on the board of McKesson & Robbins when President F. Donald Coster defrauded the firm of millions, and killed himself. After that, Weinberg kept close tabs on every corporation for which he was a board member, built a reputation as an invaluable addition to any board. In 1946, General Electric had mapped an expansion program of several hundred million dollars, and President Charles E. Wilson was not sure how his board would react. His worries vanished when Weinberg supported the plans with hard facts and figures. Said Wilson: "Sidney had done his homework, and that was all I needed."