Word: sneed
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...without loss and brought in almost 6,000 depositors with more than $7,000,000 in accounts. About two-thirds of its clients are black, but the bank also gets business from some white-owned firms, including the Gillette Co. and New England Mutual Life Insurance Co. President Donald Sneed Jr., 35, a former real estate broker, reported a profit of $47,520 for the first six months of the bank's operations...
...idea for a bank in Roxbury came from a Negro student at Harvard Business School, John Hayden, now 26. He wrote his master's thesis on black banking and then started buttonholing influential people, including Sneed. Businessman Sneed, who never went to college, did most of the groundwork. He advertised "the bank with a purpose" in the ghetto weekly and sold $10 shares in the venture to 3,358 small investors. Boston's National Shawmut Bank and the New England Merchants National Bank contributed advice...
Business at Unity is done in a deliberately casual atmosphere designed to put people at ease. Rock music plays softly from loudspeakers. Bank employees banter with people who just drop in to have a neighborly chat. "We're more than a bank," says Sneed. "If we have to say no to a customer, we say, 'No. Because...
Other experiences have made Sneed cynical. When Unity was establishing itself, Only one-tenth of one percent of the corporations invited to be stockholders actually responded. John Hancock, American Mutual, and Liberty Mutual are among those that did. The main task facing the bank now is soliciting accounts. Response, generally, has been good, with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts placing $360,000 in Unity last week to become the largest single depositor. Previously, the United Front Foundation had the largest account. Brandeis, Andover Theological School, Northeastern University, and Boston College have all become depositors and M.I.T. is a stockholder...
...Sneed said that "life insurance companies (like N.E. Mutual) are banking here because it's good business. They may find a new market for their service, and by establishing positive relations with Unity's presence in Roxbury has forced large white banks to entertain propositions from black businesses that they never