Amadeo Peter Giannini:
The ANNOTICO Report
So it is natural that
Charlotte NC would take note of the SF Earthquake, which was the beginning of
Bank of America, then known as the Bank of Italy, and salute
REMEMBERING
The Charlotte Sun Herald
There's a kind of genius
that consists of originating ideas that future generations will take for
granted.
April 18 marked the
centenary of the
Giannini originated a host of modern
banking practices -- beginning with the idea that everyone should be able to
keep their money in a bank. He also pioneered easy bank credit for working
people, including home mortgages and auto loans.
Banks, a century ago, got
most of their money from wealthy depositors and loaned it on low-risk business
ventures.
Giannini was born in
In his early 30s, Giannini decided to look for a new challenge. He sold his
produce company and joined the board of a
He soon realized that the
only way to prove his point was to start his own bank. In 1904, he raised
$150,000 and opened the Bank of Italy in a former saloon, thoughtfully hiring
the barkeep as an assistant teller.
Two years later,
The disaster was Giannini's finest hour, but he remained a genteel maverick
of the financial world for the rest of his long career. For example, Giannini was one of the first bankers to finance the motion
picture industry, even bailing out Walt Disney when he ran $2 million over
budget on "Snow White."
Following a series of
transactions, Bank of Italy was merged into then-
Today, Bank of America is
just about everywhere, following its merger with NationsBank in 1998. It's the
second-largest financial services company in the nation, behind Citigroup, and
ranks 12th on the Fortune 500.
Remarkably, Giannini never sought a great personal fortune. His estate
was valued at less than $500,000, a tidy sum in 1949 dollars, but nowhere near
enough to place him among the richest Americans of his time.
The U.S. Postal Service
honored Giannini with a stamp in 1973, and Time
magazine in 1998 named him among the 100 most influential people of the 20th
century.
A businessman of integrity
and vision, Amadeo Giannini
was truly a hero of free enterprise.
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