Davison's Bank

Into the darkened Manhattan dining room where 700 bigwigs of finance, industry and commerce were dining last week, went a procession of servants bearing on platters before them, not boars' heads nor puddings blazing with brandy, but great candied cakes, each lit by 25 candles. It was a symbolic procession to mark, as the banquet and its other sequences marked, the completion of 25 years' service to the New York community by the Bankers Trust Company.

The late Henry Pomeroy Davison founded the Bankers Trust in 1903. He was then the energetic and radiant vice president of the First National Bank in Manhattan and the friend of many an important personage of Wall Street. When he gave a dinner it was well attended. At one such dinner he presented his idea of a trust company that would not compete for business with commercial banks; but would act as the fiduciary agent for state and national banks throughout the country, and would accept as deposits the reserve funds of other banks.

The idea was good; the trust company was formed with the liveliest and most aggressive young men of New York's financial district on its board of directors. Mr. Davison's banking sagacity and charm had brought them together. He acted as their chairman; Edmund C. Converse of the Liberty National Bank, where ten years before Davison had himself got his first important Manhattan banking job, went to the Bankers Trust as president. Thomas W. Lament was secretary & treasurer.

The Bankers Trust was to become, after it added commercial banking to its activities, the sixth largest bank in the U. S. Meanwhile, Mr. Davison was to become a Morgan partner in 1909, after he had further distinguished himself during the panic of 1907.

When Henry Pomeroy Davison became a Morgan partner he was 42 years old; 30 years younger than the late John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913); three months older than the present John Pierpont Morgan.

Mr. Davison's shrewd evaluation of the lively mentality and personality of Thomas William Lamont was influential in making him a Morgan partner in 1911. Thomas Lamont was 41 then. Mr. Davison also noted the persuasive powers of Lawyer Dwight Whitney Morrow, and greeted him as partner after the elder Morgan's death. Dwight Morrow was 41 then.

Before the War, the Morrows, the Laments, the Davisons and the Thomas Cochrans (Morgan partner since 1917) all lived in Englewood, N. J., across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Since the War Mr. Lamont has become (next to John Pierpont Morgan) the best known Morgan partner and U. S. international financier. Mr. Morrow is currently the outstanding U. S. diplomat--Ambassador to Mexico. Mr. Cochran became the Morgan partner on the board of General Motors, and, like Mr. Davison before him, chairman of the executive committee of the Bankers Trust Co. For Henry Pomeroy Davison died in 1922, aged 55, having given to the Red Cross so much of his apparently limitless vitality that there remained too little for himself.