A misfit among Wall Street’s Waspish bankers, J.M. identified more with the parochial school boys he had grown up with than with the rich executives whose number he had joined. Unlike other financiers in the roaring eighties, who were fast becoming trendy habitués of the social pages, Meriwether disdained attention (he purged his picture from Salomon’s annual report) and refused to dine on any food that smacked of French. When in Tokyo, he went to McDonald’s. Ever an outsider, he molded his group into a tribe of outsiders as cohesive, loyal, and protective as the world he had left in Rosemoor.
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