John Shepard Reed
American businessman
About John Shepard Reed
Born 1939. John Shepard Reed is an American businessperson, citigroup and massachusetts Institute of Technology.
John Shepard Reed (born February 7, 1939) is the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. He previously served as chairman and CEO of Citicorp, Citibank, and post-merger, Citigroup. He is the past chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's board of trustees.
Biography He was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Calvin Francis Reed and Virginia (Shepard) Reed. He was raised in Argentina and Brazil. Reed earned his undergraduate degrees in a 3-2 program from Washington and Jefferson College (W&J) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), earning a B.S. from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1961.
Reed was heavily responsible for pushing for the adoption of the ATM around the US, and led Citicorp through a perilous period in the early 1990s. He was approached by Sandy Weill to merge with Travelers Group a year before the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (repealing the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933), allowing banking, insurance and securities companies to merge. The result was Citigroup, where Reed was later ousted in a management shakeup with Weill. Reed's departure was announced in a 28 February 2000 press release. In the aftermath of the November 2008 federal bailout of Citigroup, Reed was described as deeply skeptical of the "Wall Street financial engineering" that led to its collapse and "committed to consumer banking and sound commercial underwriting".
Reed was asked to be interim CEO of the New York Stock Exchange after the Richard Grasso over-compensation scandal. He accepted the job for a $1 salary and set up new governance rules as the NYSE became a public corporation.
Reed was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
Reed was the chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Corporation (board of trustees) from 2010 through 2014.
He was a longtime member of the board of directors of Altria Group (and predecessor Phillip Morris Companies) through his retirement in 2008.
He became member of the Board of Directors of CaixaBank in 2011. In February 2016, he was elected president of the board of Boston Athenaeum.
Strategic planning Reed's expectation that his business managers be able to present their proposed business strategies in a few presentation slides without excessive use of data and documentation is referenced by business writers W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in a Harvard Business Review publication.
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Important facts
People in John Shepard Reed's life
Named in this biography and alive at the same time
Contemporaries
People whose lives overlapped John Shepard Reed's
Frequently asked questions
Who is John Shepard Reed?
American businessman
When was John Shepard Reed born?
John Shepard Reed was born on 7 February 1939 in Chicago.
What is John Shepard Reed's occupation?
John Shepard Reed is a businessperson, citigroup and massachusetts Institute of Technology.
What nationality is John Shepard Reed?
John Shepard Reed is American.
Sources & further reading
· Wikipedia: John Shepard Reed
Cite this page
APA: Biography.guide. (2026). John Shepard Reed. https://biography.guide/john-shepard-reed/
MLA: "John Shepard Reed." Biography.guide, https://biography.guide/john-shepard-reed/.
Chicago: "John Shepard Reed." Biography.guide. https://biography.guide/john-shepard-reed/.
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