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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Walter B. Wriston
11 distinguished individuals to receive Medal of Freedom at the White House
Walter Wriston
President George W. Bush will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor on Wednesday June 23, 2004, to Mormon Church President Gordon B. Hinckley, actress Doris Day, golfer Arnold Palmer, politician Edward Brooke, historian Vartan Gregorian, National Geographic Society Chairman Gilbert Grosvenor, cosmetics mogul Estee Lauder, actress Rita Moreno, ophthalmology researcher Arnall Patz, journalist Norman Podhoretz and economist and banker Walter Wriston the White House announced Friday.
They will join Pope John Paul II and journalist Robert Bartley as 2004 recipients.
President Truman established the award in 1945 to honor civilian contributions during World War II. It was reinstated by President Kennedy in 1963 to recognize distinguished peacetime service. The medal has been conferred on roughly 400 individuals since its introduction.
Bush will present the medals at a White House ceremony on Wednesday, although the president delivered the award to the pope during a visit to the Vatican earlier this month.
Honorees are recommended to the president by a Distinguished Civilian Service Awards Board. Past recipients include former presidents, astronauts, entertainers, scientists, religious leaders and victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Walter B. Wriston
Walter B. Wriston, the former president and chairman of Citicorp, is among the most innovative financiers of our time. In The Twilight of Sovereignty, he lucidly reveals the vast geopolitical implications of the massive information revolution in progress around the globe.
Human intelligence and intellectual resources are now the world's prime capital, Wriston shows. Instant global communication-the marriage of satellites, television, fax, cellular telephones, and worldwide computer networks-has had and will continue to have world-shaking consequences. The fundamental result is that national boundaries are increasingly irrelevant, and the traditional power and perquisites of sovereignty are disappearing. The effect of this revolution, says Wriston, is the formation of a new global democratic order: "No matter what political leaders do or say, the screens will continue to light up, traders will trade, and currency values will continue to be set, not only by sovereign governments but by global plebiscite," he writes. Today, there can be no more unreported Chernobyl disasters. There can be no more Pearl Harbor-like surprises. The vast migrations on every continent; the drive of informed peoples for self-determination; the collapse of the Soviet empire; the democratization of Latin America; the outburst of ethnic rivalries-all become understandable in the challenging light of Wriston's persuasive analysis.
Wriston stresses that in the information revolution, technology itself is of secondary importance. His larger vision is of the transformation of our public and private institutions. Within the corporation, too, the twilight of sovereignty is near. The immediate and simultaneous availability of data to those at every level of authority within the corporation means that in today's business world, traditional executive power is ended. Looking to the future, Wriston outlines the new management philosophies and radically changed managerial structures that will follow the end of corporate centralization.
Walter Wriston and former Senator Sam Nunn
Former Citicorp Chairman Walter Wriston discusses the mobility of capital in the global economy at Cato's Annual Monetary Conference 1998.
Walter Wriston, Ex-Citigroup Chief Executive, Dies
Jan. 20, 2005 (Bloomberg) -- Walter B. Wriston, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Citicorp/Citibank whose emphasis on technological innovations helped make the bank the world's largest, has died. He was 85.
Wriston died yesterday of pancreatic cancer in New York.
"Walter Wriston was a great man and one of the foremost bankers of the 20th century,'' Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Charles Prince said in a statement. "He had a profound impact on the financial services industry and was an influential voice on the global economy.''
Citigroup Chairman Sanford Weill called Wriston "a great man'' and praised him for "thinking globally before it was fashionable.''
Wriston served as chief executive of Citicorp and its predecessor, Citibank, from 1967 to 1984. He also served as chairman from 1970 to 1984, when he left and handed the reins to John Reed, the current chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.
By the time Wriston retired, Reed had implemented much of Wriston's technological vision, including the introduction of ATMs, and Citibank had put $1.75 billion into computer hardware and software.
``Walt stood out among his many peers as an innovator, having pioneered the automated teller machine, which changed the way people banked forever,'' Prince said. "He was my friend, a mentor, and I will miss Walt very much. One of the brightest lights in Citigroup's history has gone out.''
`Gentleman of the Old School'
David Rockefeller, who was chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank when Wriston was chairman of Citibank, said in a statement that Wriston "was a giant in the banking industry'' and was "one tough competitor,'' respected for his ``innovation, integrity and financial knowledge.''
"He was a very fine gentleman of the old school,'' said Jon Burnham, chairman of Burnham Asset Management. Burnham said his father, I.W. "Tubby'' Burnham, who founded Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. and died in 2002, was a ``very good friend'' of Wriston.
In a 1996 interview with Wired magazine, Wriston said none of the bank's technological innovations were well received "by our friends in the banking community.''
"Old people won't use automatic teller machines,' they said `and young people won't use them because they prefer going to tellers with pearly white teeth.' But it turned out that people would rather get their money in front of the Hard Rock Cafe at 11 o'clock at night than get smiled at by a teller,'' Wriston told the magazine.
Best-Selling Author
Wriston was the author of several best-selling books, including "Risk & Other Four-Letter Words'' (1986), and "In The Twilight of Sovereignty: How the Information Revolution Is Transforming Our World''(1992), in which he wrote about the geopolitical implications of the information revolution.
Wriston said the basis for wealth had evolved from land to labor to information.
``Information about money has become almost as important as money itself,'' he said.
Wriston was the subject of a 1,000-page biography in 1995, "Wriston: Walter Wriston, Citibank and the Rise and Fall of American Financial Supremacy.'' The book regarded him as the kingpin of modern American finance.
He was born in Middletown, Connecticut, on Aug. 3, 1919, and graduated from Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
Junior Inspector to Chairman
After a year's service as a U.S. State Department officer and a four-year tour of duty with the U.S. Army during World War II, he joined Citibank in 1946 as a junior inspector in the comptroller's division. Before becoming chairman in 1970, he held numerous posts in the bank's national and international businesses.
Wriston was a director of Icos Corp., York International Corp., Cygnus Inc., and Vion Pharmaceuticals Inc.
He was chairman of President Ronald Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board, a member and former chairman of the Business Council, and a former co-chairman and policy committee member of the Business Roundtable.
Wriston received the Presidential Medal of Freedom , the nation's highest civil honor, in June.
He is survived by his wife Kathy, daughter Catherine and two grandchildren.
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Medal History
