It was somehow appropriate that the first tip came two months ago in Suzy Knickerbocker's syndicated society column: Serge Semenenko, 63, was soon to retire as vice chairman and director of the First National Bank of Boston. Last week the bank and the vice chairman made it official.
With his Slavic accent, lavish entertaining and yachting on the Mediterranean, Semenenko never quite fitted the Boston banking mold. In 41 years with New England's biggest commercial bank (assets $2.9 billion), he capitalized on his own quite different assets to carve an interesting place in the financial world. Son of a wealthy Odessa industrialist who fled the Russian revolution in 1919, Semenenko made his way to the U.S. and a Harvard Business School graduate degree. Two years after he joined First National as a $100-a-month clerk, he was an assistant vice president and off on a career that made him famous as a financial arranger. The loans he set up rescued scores of ailing companies, including such giants as Warner Bros, and The Hearst Corp. He helped swing Hilton's acquisition of the Statler hotel chain, and got more than his usual share of public attention when he arranged to bail out the faltering Curtis Publishing Co. in 1963 with $35 million.
Retirement does not quite describe Semenenko's future plans. He will become a private financial consultant, with offices in Boston and Manhattan (and a villa in Acapulco), and go on as before, arranging acquisitions, making mergers and fixing sick companies.