Word: gianninis
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...future of Giannini's empire-founded on the passionate belief that banking opportunity lies with the little fellow's money-seemed bright. From the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the Mexican line, the West Coast was booming, its fears of postwar slump almost forgotten...
Triumph. For A. P. Giannini, who had once peddled vegetables, it was enough to meditate in fierce and profane triumph. He still had enemies, but he had smitten the big ones hip & thigh. Wall Street, and the "goddamned Eastern bankers" who had once tried to swallow him, could only watch him impotently now, with half-reluctant admiration. This week, after 42 years of struggle, his Bank of America National Trust & Savings Association, which covers California with 494 branches in over 300 cities, had become the biggest private bank in the world. Once before, Bank of America had passed Manhattan...
Next year he was furiously booking passage home again. Walker had publicly announced that the books of Transamerica were padded with good will, inflated evaluations of subsidiary companies; that Giannini's $1,100,000,000 estimate of its worth was $800 million too high. He had sold the New York banks, booted Gian nini men out of Transamerica, was preparing to shuck off Bank of America...
...Giannini landed at Quebec, crossed Canada secretly, got to Lake Tahoe before anyone knew he was in the U.S. He began a giant proxy fight, barnstormed California, finally recaptured control, with 63% of the stockholders' proxies. He went back in triumph to the Bank of America's big building in San Francisco...
Padrone. Today, although he is technically retired, Amadeo Peter Giannini is still in control of his sprawling Goliath. A widower, he lives with his daughter in the gabled house he built in San Mateo before the earthquake. "She has her guests in," he explains, "and they talk or play cards. I sit in a corner and listen to the radio." Every facet of his business still interests him. "My brain never stops," he says. "I think while I sleep...