Word: gianninis
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Financiers, including A.P. Giannini (Bank of America) and Charles Merrill (Merrill Lynch), make our list, but some might argue that finance is underrepresented, since it was the availability of capital, as much or more than individual genius or initiative, that so often created the conditions for business success. By that measure, Drexel Burnham's Michael Milken, who raised billions for the likes of Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch and MCI Corp., should be included, notwithstanding his conviction for violating securities laws and his time spent in jail. Other financial innovators who changed the way we spend and save might also have...
Like a lot of folks in the San Francisco area, Amadeo Peter Giannini was thrown from his bed in the wee hours of April 18, 1906, when the Great Quake shook parts of the city to rubble. He hurriedly dressed and hitched a team of horses to a borrowed produce wagon and headed into town--to the Bank of Italy, which he had founded two years earlier. Sifting through the ruins, he discreetly loaded $2 million in gold, coins and securities onto the wagon bed, covered the bank's resources with a layer of vegetables and headed home...
...days after the disaster, the man known as A.P. broke ranks with his fellow bankers, many of whom wanted area banks to remain shut to sort out the damage. Giannini quickly set up shop on the docks near San Francisco's North Beach. With a wooden plank straddling two barrels for a desk, he began to extend credit "on a face and a signature" to small businesses and individuals in need of money to rebuild their lives. His actions spurred the city's redevelopment...
That would have been legacy enough for most people. But Giannini's mark extends far beyond San Francisco, where his dogged determination and unusual focus on "the little people" helped build what was at his death the largest bank in the country, Bank of America, with assets of $5 billion. (It's now No. 2, with assets of $572 billion, behind Citigroup's $751 billion...
Magic realism dictates, moreover, that they be archetypes: Grandpa (Anthony Quinn) is a lusty old windbag; Dad (Giancarlo Giannini) is an uneasy martinet; Mom (Angelica Aragon) is full of soft romantic sentiment. They also, of course, have a fierce, primitive, mystical relationship with the land that nurtures them. The stranger must embrace the acreage before he can embrace their daughter...