The Mellons Go to Work Again

In 1889, when the late Andrew William Mellon founded his first Pittsburgh bank, he called it "The Union Transfer and Trust Co." The choice of name was unfortunate. So many householders asked to have their furniture moved that the title had to be changed to "The Union Trust Co. of Pittsburgh."

Last week The Union Trust Co. proposed to change its name again. Richard King Mellon, third generation head of the Mellon family empire, announced that Union Trust planned to merge with Mellon National Bank. The new institution, to be known as Mellon National Bank and Trust Co., will give Pittsburgh its first $1 billion bank (16th largest bank in the U.S.). It also intends to give such other giants as Manhattan's Chase National and old A. P. Giannini's Bank of America some tough new competition for a bigger share of the nation's industrial loans.

Chief administrative officer of the new bank will be Frank R. Denton, who caught the eye of Andrew W. Mellon in 1929, when Denton was the youngest (24) bank examiner in the U.S. He proved himself as chief of the Mellbank Corp., a holding corporation for 18 Mellon-controlled Pennsylvania banks, and later as president of the Mellon Securities Corp.

When war came, he was commissioned a colonel, rose to brigadier general in the Army Service Forces. There he won the Distinguished Service Medal, was given much of the credit for buying textiles for the Army so skillfully that rationing of civilian clothing was averted. He got out of the Army shortly after Dick Mellon, 47, who had also served as a colonel and also won a D.S.M. Dick Mellon had some ideas about a new job for Denton and the vast Mellon interests.

First Dick Mellon consolidated the Mellon Indemnity Corp. and General Reinsurance Corp. of New York to centralize the Mellon insurance interests. Then he set up T. Mellon & Sons, top policy group for all the Mellon clan. Actually it was a third generation team to coordinate and plan family financial strategy, like the first generation team of T. Mellon & Sons (Judge Thomas Mellon and Sons Thomas and James) which founded the Mellon dynasty.

Next step was to merge Mellon Securities with the First Boston Corp. (TIME, July 8)--a move which would free Denton for his new job. By these moves, the Mellons will broaden their interests in the investment field, end the competition in Pittsburgh between the two Mellon controlled banks, develop a top strategy group to run their empire. They were not pulling in their financial horns. Their contraction was only to expand further. Now streamlined, and with $1,200,000,000 in resources in their new bank alone, they are ready to step out into new investment fields. As Dick Mellon, chairman of the proposed new bank, put it: "We're going to work again."

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