Eagle in Spring Street

San Francisco's aquiline old Amadeo Peter Giannini, whose $5,538 million, 493-branch Bank of America is the world's largest private bank (TIME, April 15), circled low for another capture. His prey: the $360 million, 31-branch Citizens National Trust & Savings Bank of Los Angeles.

Citizens National was nothing new in A.P.'s ken. He tried to take it over in 1943, when his top holding company, Transamerica Corp., offered to exchange 124,000 shares of Manhattan's National City Bank for the same number of shares in Citizens National. But Herbert Dee Ivey, Citizens National's up-from-messenger president, wanted no part of Giannini domination. He and his brother, Executive Vice-President L. Otis Ivey, persuaded the bank's 21-man board of directors to turn the offer down cold.

Never easily beaten off, A.P. went past the board to individual stockholders. Buying up stock wherever he could find it, he soon owned more than anybody else--enough to put six Giannini men in as directors of the bank. But he still lacked complete control.

Last month the ominous word went out over Los Angeles' Spring Street that "cleaning up this Citizens National situation" had become No. one on the list of things 76-year-old Mr. Giannini wanted to do before it was too late. Early in August every director of the bank received a letter from Giannini. "The management [needs] strengthening," he wrote. "I trust you will take immediate steps."

Actually, it was hard to find great fault with the way President Ivey had run Citizens National. The bank had weathered the depression without Government help (as Giannini's organization had not), its earnings were regular, if unspectacular. A.P.'s only specific complaint: "Its capital funds have not been restored to the 1930 position."

But when the directors met last week, they plainly showed signs of being unnerved by the Giannini maneuverings. Unanimously they adopted a resolution to go shopping for an aggressive new executive or two. To Spring Street it looked as though old A. P. would soon be playing in the Ivey League.

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