Ace Greenberg: Sandy Weill Impersonator Called For Breakup Of Big Banks

Ace Greenberg, former CEO of Bear Stearns, can't believe former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill in fact called for the breakup of big banks last month.

Instead, Greenberg said on Bloomberg TV on Tuesday, someone must have impersonated Weill.

"That was that guy Sacha Baron Cohen, or whatever his name is. He was impersonating Sandy," Greenberg said. "That was not Sandy. I know Sandy. That couldn't have been him."

Baron Cohen is known for playing Borat and Ali G, among other characters, but usually does not impersonate real people. Still, it appears Greenberg was not joking.

"I think it was a guy making a movie about Wall Street or something. That's my guess," Greenberg continued. When asked why Weill may have made those comments, Greenberg said: "You have to ask Sacha."

Greenberg oversaw the collapse of Bear Stearns as chairman of its executive committee, when JPMorgan Chase bought the struggling bank in March of 2008. He told Newsweek in 2010 that he learned "nothing that I didn’t know before" from the financial crisis.

Weill, on the other hand, has become a reformed banker. After pioneering too-big-to-fail banking, as creator of the modern Citigroup, and crusading against financial regulations, he called for the end of too-big-to-fail banks in an interview with CNBC in July.

But Greenberg insists that it was actually Borat who said that.