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Family Bank. At the time, the Chase was a "wholesale" bank that took deposits almost wholly from other banks and from large corporations. Oddly enough, there had never been a Chase prominently connected with the bank. Founder John Thompson, a Wall Street financier, named it the Chase National Bank in 1877 because of his deep admiration for the policies of Lincoln's Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase. It became a "Rockefeller bank," and Aldrich moved in when it merged with John D. Jr.'s Equitable Trust Co. Aldrich, in 20 years in charge, saw the Chase safely through the Depression, but after World War II he let it slip along haphazardly without even so much as the formality of a budget to guide it. Moving with the times. Chase's archrival, the First National City Bank, surged ahead, setting up branch offices all over Manhattan to attract the "middle millions" of small depositors, and widening its lead in international banking.
Aldrich's successor, John J. McCloy (now one of President Kennedy's chief disarmament advisers), put the Chase into retail banking by merging in 1955 with the Bank of the Manhattan Co., which had 67 branches and a venerable history.
(It was an offshoot of a corporation founded with the help of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr to build Manhattan's first water works; the pistols from the Hamilton-Burr duel now sit in a glass case outside Rockefeller's office.) Inside the bank, David was making his mark as head of a committee to straighten out organizational problems—defining job areas, setting lines of authority, establishing a budget. When McCloy retired nearly two years ago, Rockefeller moved from vice chairman to president with chief responsibility for forward planning and international business; George Champion—a onetime Illinois farmboy, with 30 years in Chase service—became chairman with responsibility for day-to-day operations.
Ice Cream & Salad Bowls. The Chase that Rockefeller and Champion head is vastly different from the bank that once looked down its nose at any account less than $5,000. Oldtime Chase executives would be surprised to see the razzle-dazzle the bank now goes through to get customers, e.g., passing out ice cream "checks" to kiddies, giving such homey gifts as salad bowls and picnic coolers to new depositors, spending a stiff $3,400,000 a year on advertising to persuade clerks and plumbers that whenever they want a $200 personal loan "you have a friend at Chase Manhattan." And where once Chase was the last to try anything new, it recently was the first major U.S. commercial bank to raise interest rates on savings accounts to 4% in a move to fend off competition from savings and loan associations and mutual savings banks. This week Rockefeller is sending forth a team of 75 "financial counselors," i.e., hard-sell salesmen, to comb the country for commercial accounts. Says Stewart Hawes, president of Wall Street's Blyth & Co.: "There's a spirit of energy at the Chase now. They're more original, more broad-minded than they used to be."