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Mule Trader. Though his world is the money business, Alexander has never spent much time worrying about the material rewards of his work. "If a man does good work in his profession," he says, "his livelihood looks after itself." His duties at Morgan Guaranty pay him about $150,000 a year, but he spends it modestly. With his pretty wife, onetime Powers Model Janet Hutchinson, and his daughter, Janet, 9, who attends Spence School, he lives in a Manhattan apartment. It is hardly big enough when the rest of the family arrives home; they are sons Clay, 24, a medical student at Cornell New York hospital; Thomas, 22, a senior at Washington and Lee University; and David, who is in the Army. Alexander also keeps an unpretentious summer home made out of an old windmill at Chatham on Cape Cod.
A Jacksonian Democrat by birthright, Alexander is a registered Republican. To please his wife, an Episcopalian, he is also split on religion. "I am a Methodist in town," he says, "and an Episcopalian in the country." He is active in social and charitable drives, is a trustee of Vanderbilt University. He likes to get back to Tennessee twice a year, chat with hometown folks. Recently a farmer who did not know Alexander's occupation chatted with him for a while about mules, later told a friend: "He is the nicest mule trader I ever met."
Alexander loves to fish, hunt and play golf (in the low 905), belongs to the rugged Eastward-Ho! course at Chatham, the exclusive Links Club in Manhattan. Whatever free time he has he likes to spend at home, relaxes with music (Beethoven, Chopin, Bach) or TV (favorite program: Public Defender).
Great Adventure. Such occasions are all too infrequent. Henry Alexander's schedule is so jampacked that he has had only a week's vacation in the last year. He reaches his office at 9 a.m., at 9:45 a.m. meets with the bank's 30 top officers to discuss anything from an outbreak in the Middle East to the problems of a new client. The rest of his day is spent telephoning, meeting with officers on bank affairs, and making his round of personal contacts as the bank's chief emissary. Alexander gives his officers wide latitude in making decisions, in line with Morgan's partnership tradition, but he is often called on to make spot decisions, approve or reject a project before it gets too far.
Alexander also devotes much of his time to the five companies on whose boards he serves. The directorships are no sinecures; he often lugs home for the weekend a briefcase stuffed with memos. "He reads 'em, too," says General Motors
Chairman Fred Donner. "That is part of Alexander's value on our board. He does his homework, then comes into meetings with ideas." Alexander considers banking a great adventure. Says he: "The range of men and interests one gets in banking is about as great as any I know. You deal with the whole range of affairs: industry, economic activity, production, distribution, consumption, and the always fascinating and elusive subject of money."