San Francisco's aquiline old Amadeo Peter Giannini, whose $5,538 million, 493-branch Bank of America is the world's largest private bank (TIME, April 15), circled low for another capture. His prey: the $360 million, 31-branch Citizens National Trust & Savings Bank of Los Angeles.
Citizens National was nothing new in A.P.'s ken. He tried to take it over in 1943, when his top holding company, Transamerica Corp., offered to exchange 124,000 shares of Manhattan's National City Bank for the same number of shares in Citizens National. But Herbert Dee Ivey, Citizens National's up-from-messenger president, wanted no part of Giannini domination. He and...
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