A. P.'s Team
"I'm retired, dammit," says leonine old Amadeo Peter Giannini, chairman of the board of California's huge Bank of America, whenever reporters note that he still bosses his 478-branch colossus.-But 73-year-old A. P. still goes to work in his walnut-paneled San Francisco office every day; he has been "retiring" ever since he was 31, when he decided that he had earned enough in his stepfather's fruit and vegetable business to take life easy. Actually no one believes his beloved bank will be run by anyone else so long as A. P. can draw breath.
Two Comers. Nonetheless Banker Giannini has for years been stocking the executive floor of his bank with likely younger men who may one day succeed him. His taciturn lawyer son Lawrence Mario (48), who has been Bank of America president since 1936, has always been frail, lately has spent long periods away from his desk. Last year, when A.P. bought California's Pacific Finance Co., he made its go-getting, 50-year-old president Francis Baer vice chairman of the bank's board, and West Coast financiers buzzed that A. P. bought the company to get the man and groom him for president.
A. P. says Francis Baer is "a comer [who will] cut a big figure in this business." But last week he turned his spotlight upon another of his executives: big, dark, 54-year-old Carl F. Wente, who stepped into a newly created job as senior vice president of Bank of America.
Carl Wente has moved steadily up through the Giannini empire for the past 25 years, is a man after old A. P.'s heart. He went to work after two years of high school, hates "golfing bankers." When someone asks him how much bigger the Bank of America can become, his uneven beetle brows twitch and he snaps back "How high is up?"
Two Answers. Whoever inherits the empire, Baer and Wente make a logical team to work in harness under the brilliant, ailing Mario and his indestructible father. Baer, the consumer finance expert, is the perfect answer to A. P.'s booming small-loan business (the bank had 3,000,000 borrowers averaging loans of $300 apiece between 1935 and 1941). Wente has worked in a score of the small country and city banks that are now cashing in for A. P., knows farm, livestock and small .business problems. As his boss puts it, "he knows a lot more about banking than any city banker." From A. P., who hates Wall Street and hoity-toity big business almost more than he hates the New Deal, there can be no higher praise.
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