(3 of 10)
At his bank, the differences between the old and new are just as great. Once, the House of Morgan dealt only with the biggest customers, selected with great care, as if they were being privileged to join an exclusive club. The Morgan Guaranty still deals primarily with big customers, but it hunts them with all the relish of a pointer after quail. Alexander has 70 bright young men, his "bird dogs," who spend all their time hustling up new customers, keep them happy with everything from new or better ways to use their money to getting them theater tickets.
Alexander himself is Morgan Guaranty's chief bird dog. He moves through a constant round of meetings, receptions and official dinners with bankers, ambassadors, corporate presidents. He is constantly on the alert for the clue that will tell him where to find a potential customer, where to make a big new loan. His door is never closed to those who want to see him. In a recent week he met with the Belgian ambassador and the finance minister of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, played host to several distinguished British bankers, received half a dozen officers of corresponding banks. One customer summed him up: "Quick, pleasant, brilliant."
Attracting the Elite. Bird Dog Alexander has kept his bank on the path that has always been the specialty of both J. P. Morgan and Guaranty: catering to the top level of business, finance and government. Morgan Guaranty is the biggest U.S. bank that is strictly "wholesale"-and one of the few wholesale banks left. Says Alexander:"We don't want to be just another big bank. We want to be a special kind of bank, where all the expertness that American business wants can be found."
Alexander's "special kind of bank" has attracted the biggest lights of the financial firmament. More than half of the top 500 U.S. corporations—including such giants as General Electric, General Motors and Standard Oil (New Jersey)—bank with Morgan Guaranty. The U.S. Government leans on Morgan Guaranty as one of the principal dealers in government securities. The bank annually sends out more than 9,200,000 dividend checks worth $1 billion for corporations, takes care of investing $6.5 billion in trust funds. Morgan Guaranty runs pension funds for such big corporations as Johns-Manville, Kennecott Copper, Philip Morris, the New York Times. It runs them well. Alexander's current appraisal of the stock market is one of caution; the bank is now putting only one-third of new money into stocks, compared with its normal 50%.
The corporate giants are attracted to