There they are, John Reed and Sandy Weill, wind in their hair, standing on the prow of a giant, unsinkable ship and gazing into a limitless future. The greatest strength of this deal is its sheer size. Its size, however, also may prove to be its greatest weakness. In finance, as in seafaring, bigger is not always better.
Assets can be a heavy weight to bear when they underperform.
Weill and Reed are betting that they can gain what is quaintly known as ''share of wallet'' by creating a worldwide brand and a full gamut of homemade products and services. Their big idea is to use Citicorp's branch network to sell products from Travelers such as insurance and Smith Barney Inc.'s brokerage service, while using Travelers sales agents to push Citicorp products, such as credit cards. For that strategy, scale and breadth are essential. But there is another way to offer a supermarket of financial services that could make Citigroup look archaic before it gets its first letterhead printed. The companies whose products the distributor sells focus on doing one thing well, whether it's mortgages or credit cards.