Whatever happened to the ruthless streak in Citigroup's Sandy Weill? Here was a man whose record of destroying any internal opposition made Ivan the Terrible look like a pussycat. If Weill had been Wyatt Earp at the OK Corral, he wouldn't even have called for the help of his brother Virgil, or "Doc" Holliday to destroy Ike Clanton and his gang.

So why did Sandy and the chief executive of Salomon Smith Barney allow themselves to be led in a merry dance by their former telecoms star, Jack Grubman. Not only was Grubman Citigroup's number one public embarrassment, but his card had been marked by Eliot Spitzer and his regulators for more than a year. The vultures circling above SSB's HQ had already identified Grubman as dead meat.