In San Francisco a municipal swimming pool, zoo, park all bear the name of Fleishhacker—not only because Banker Herbert Fleishhacker was a big contributor to them, but because when serving a brief term as a park commissioner he named almost everything but the city sidewalks after himself. Generally regarded as the West Coast's No. 2 financier (Amadeo Peter Giannini, No. 1), Herbert Fleishhacker for years has headed Anglo California National Bank, seen its deposits zoom from $4,500,000 to $200,000,000. Last week his career as a banker was over.
A raucously indefatigable practical joker (he once planted 100 pigeons in a friend's office), heavy-jowled, big-nosed Herbert got into banking in 1907 after making a small fortune in wood, paper and power mills. Subsequent huge profits in shipping, agriculture, oil, mining, hotels and cement won him great repute as a daring plunger. But some stockholders charged that his plunges were more profitable to Herbert than to them. (Last month the Maritime Commission listed him among those who milked the Dollar Line almost to extinction.)
Last year a San Francisco judge found him guilty of pocketing emoluments of some $300,000 from a loan his bank made to a firm reselling Government steel after the War (TIME, Sept. 6, 1937, et seq.). This year another judge ordered him to pay damages of $651,579 for selling at too low a price some oil lands belonging to certain Lazard Frères heirs in 1915-17. Although he has appealed both cases. Herbert Fleishhacker last week cited them in turning in his resignation. "I feel," said he, "that the best interests of the bank may be prejudiced by my serving as president. . . ." When judgments of $736,485 were returned against him in the Government steel case last March, he was granted a 60-day stay provided he post $800,000 bond. He failed to post it — presumably because he could not raise the money — and the court started attaching his assets in August. Last week Herbert made a date for November 10 to list his assets before a referee in bankruptcy, turned management of the bank over to his less flamboyant brother Mortimer.