Word: gianninis
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...Amadeo Giannini...
...early as 1942, says Eccles, the Federal Reserve System, the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. became alarmed at the mushrooming growth of Transamerica Corp., the Giannini holding company which was buying up banks and making them branches of Bank of America (some of them in competition with Eccles' family banks). Accordingly, the three agencies notified Transamerica that they would not permit it to "branch" any more banks. But this united front, said Eccles, ended when John Snyder took over the Treasury. In 1946, Snyder's Comptroller of the Currency let Transamerica spread...
...Eccles decided that FRB should do so. In November 1947 FRB ordered an anti-trust investigation. The President declined to reappoint Eccles as FRB chairman two months later. Writes Eccles: "The principal pressure that shaped the President's decision came . .. from within the inner citadel of the Giannini banking interests . . . Those who were responsible ... no doubt expected that I would resign . . . and the way would be cleared thereafter for continuous expansion...
Transamerica's expansion did continue; but so did the FRB suit against it. Stern old Amadeo P. Giannini denounced the whole thing as an Eccles plot. In any case, he had been reducing Transamerica's interest in the Bank of America. After old A.P.'s death, his son and successor, Lawrence Mario Giannini, kept on selling Transamerica's holdings in Bank of America, once 99%, until they were reduced to only 7.66%. Said Mario Giannini: "The Bank of America is not controlled by Transamerica in any manner...
Last week Rudolph M. Evans, the FRB governor who had presided over the hearings, disagreed with Giannini. Said Evans: Transamerica's 7% holdings are still enough to give it control of Bank of America. Transamerica's bank acquisitions, Evans charged, "have concentrated more economic power in one small group of men-perhaps only one man-than probably has ever happened before in the business life of our country .. . Not even the great railroad, steel, oil, tobacco or aluminum cases disclosed the existence of greater power in one organization directly to affect the economic life of so great...