Bandits could have entered the big banking room at No. 44 Wall Street last week without any trouble. One, two, three and they could have overpowered the taciturn, uniformed information clerk. They would, however, have been hard put to carry out any thievery. For the cash and securities that were in Bank of America, N. A., have all been merged with those that are National City Bank's. For weeks the big banking room has been dark, filled with row upon row of empty desks, cavernous, deserted cages.
But on the floor above, in the executive offices of the investment banking firm of Bancamerica-Blair Corp., there was much activity last week. Bancamerica-Blair was not sold to National City and is now 63% owned by Transamerica Corp., 37% by some 20,000 stockholders mostly around New York City. And, following the changes in Transamerica's management (TIME, Feb. 22), last week a revised Bancamerica-Blair management was getting accustomed to new desks, new duties.
With bright red roses on his desk, no buzzer yet connecting him with his secretary, his telephone ting-a-linging incessantly, George Newell Armsby, chairman and president, was assembling the new management, setting it agoing. It was not his first organization but it was his most important.
The year of the Chicago World's Fair (1893), stocky little George Armsby, 17, scorned college, went to work for his father's big Chicago firm, J. K. Armsby Co., distributors of California products. The next year he became a salesman, traveled through the Midwest and Southwest. Agreeable, talkative, able to swap a good yarn, he convinced buyers that they should purchase his father's peaches and prunes. Most of his life since then has been spent convincing.
A big job of convincing came in 1916.
For 18 years George Armsby had been vice president of J. K. Armsby Co. with headquarters in San Francisco. The firm had grown until it was the biggest packer of California dried fruits, biggest distributor of salmon, second biggest distributor of California canned fruits and vegetables. He decided that one big firm combining all functions of the industry, amalgamating big competitors, should be formed. To do so he had to convince some one that he should lend 16 million dollars.
Convincer Armsby marched East and laid siege to Blair & Co. and William Salomon & Co. He got the loan. California Packing Corp. (Del Monte, Sun-Kist) thus came into being. He is still vice president of the company and his family are its biggest stockholders.
His big fruit deal convinced convincing Mr. Armsby that banking was his field. After the War he convinced Blair & Co. and William Salomon & Co. that he was a good man to work with. He also convinced them that they should work with each other to the extent of merging. They did and Mr. Armsby went with them. When Blair & Co., Inc. was bought by Transamerica, Mr. Armsby found himself working for his longtime California friend and oldtime fellow fruiterer, Amadeo Peter Giannini. When Elisha Walker, then chairman of Bancamerica-Blair, and Mr. Giannini began to disagree, Mr. Armsby took no sides, respecting his friendship with each man.