Counterattack

In its antitrust suit against Tranasmerica Corp., world's biggest bank holding company, the Federal Reserve Board found the going rough. After 107 days of hearings it was still taking testimony trying to prove its case. Last week Transamerica President Sam H. Husbands, onetime RFC director, and Lawrence Mario Gianmni, the frail, shrewd president of the Bank of America, got together on a deal that did not make FRB's job any easier.

FRB's key charge was that Transamerica has a banking monopoly in California and four other western states because it has a controlling interest in 46 banks including the giant Bank of America, which it controlled through a 22.8% stock interest (reduced to 11.1% late last year). Last week Transamerica tried to take much of the steam out of FRB's case by selling 22 of its banks to the Bank of America for $18 million, thus cutting its holdings in California to only four banks Angrily, FRB went to the U.S. circuit court of appeals in San Francisco and got an injunction to block the sale on grounds as the court put it, that Transamerica might be contriving ... to circumvent the proceedings" before FRB. But that did not stop Mario Giannini. He proceeded to move into his new banks, emblazoning the name Bank of America on all 22 front windows. Furthermore he said that the sale had been approved by comptroller of the Currency Preston Delano The court has no right to forbid a purchase after it has been made, Mario said and the "transaction is an accomplished fact by operation of law."

But the law didn't see it that way The circuit court ordered Giannini and Husbands to appear this week to show cause why they should not be held in civil and criminal contempt. It looked as if Transamerica's efforts to wriggle out of its antitrust troubles might have entangled it more deeply than ever.

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