"The markets have validated the reason for our deal in that we are able to look at opportunities at how we can grow our company all over the world (at a time) when very few people are thinking that way," Weill told brokerage executives at the annual Securities Industry Association's meeting here.

"John Reed and I, as co-CEOs, are working incredibly well together."Weill, a consummate deal maker, earlier this year stitched together the biggest deal of his career, the merger between his insurance and securities company Travelers Group Inc. and banking and credit card giant Citicorp.

Since then, however, the combined entity has found it tough to integrate the group's diverse businesses, which led to the resignation of Weill's protege andCitigroup's president, Jamie Dimon. Weill on Thursday told Reuters in an interview that the group would decide in the next weeks which banking businesses it will combine.

Things looked rosier when Weill earlier this year looked to expand his company's global reach and invited Citicorp's chief executive, John Reed, to his hotel suite in Washington.

"I said: `Let me get right to the bottomline: Let's merge,'" Weill said at the meeting. Reed immediately shot back that he had thought the Travelers chief wanted him to buy a table at a local charity dinner, but later said he would sleep on it, according to Weill. The executives then clinched the basic deal, the biggest merger ever, over the next two days.

Since the companies announced the deal in April, however, the firm's stock has lost close to half of its value, and the combined company has posted a 53-per cent drop in third-quarter profits, mostly caused by bad results at its Salomon Smith Barney securities unit. To be sure, the company formally closedthe merger just over a month ago, and worldwide financial turmoil took a big bite out of all financial firms' profits.

But Weill had to made some tough management decisions, including Dimon's dismissal.

Dimon, whom analysts had expected to follow in his mentor's footsteps and become the group's chief executive, on Sunday resigned as Citigroup's president and co-head of Salomon Smith Barney. Well regarded by Wall Street, Dimon had a reputation as a savvy and decisive manager, a view that was little diminished by the $1.3 billion in bond trading losses Salomon Smith Barney racked up in the third quarter.

His resignation caused some analysts, worried whether Citigroup will successfully combine its different banking arms, to downgrade the stock. It has also raised the question of who will succeed the 65-year-old Weill at the helm of the financial services supermarket, which stocks anything from mutual funds and insurance policies to credit cards and junk bonds.But, Weill said in a brief interview he had noplans to skip his afternoon flight to New York and play the retiree in Florida.

"I don't have any plans for retirement. That's the responsibility of our board and I enjoy what I am doing," Weill said. "Succession is something that will be determined in time," he added. "With two co-CEOs, succession is less of a problem than if you have one. Weill earlier told reporters that neither of the two co-chief executives would let the other one quit.Weill pointed out that the group's consumer businesses -- insurance and consumer banking -- are being put together smoothly, but he said integrating Citicorp's corporate banking business with Travelers' Salomon Smith Barney was unworkable under its previous management.

"It was not getting together and we had to do smething to make it work," Weill earlier told reporters at the conference.

-- REUTERS