Hour of Truth in Dallas

Late last month, as the law requires, Comptroller of the Currency James J. Saxon, 48, issued a year-end call to all federally chartered U.S. banks to report their deposits on hand. By longstanding tradition, the comptroller's annual call has always come on Dec. 31--which has given growth-minded banks a chance to pad their fiscal shoulders by pulling in temporary extra deposits from correspondent banks or, less ethically, by juggling letters of credit or withdrawals still clearing the mails. Combative ex-Banker Saxon, however, chose to make his move on Dec. 28. As he hoped, the early call caught a number of surprised bankers with their deposits down.

Nowhere did faces turn quite so red as in Dallas, where the giants of Southwestern banking battle endlessly for No. 1 ranking in everything from the heft of their assets to the height of their buildings. Saxon's Dec. 28 call caught the Republic National of Dallas ("Biggest in the South") with assets of $1,112,000,000; by the time of the traditional call date three days later, Republic's assets had suddenly swollen nearly $90 million to $1,201,000,000. Similarly, Dallas' second-ranking First National Bank (which is currently building itself a headquarters 30 ft. higher than the 598-ft. skyscraper occupied by Republic) listed assets of $1,054,000,000 on Dec. 31--but only $927 million on Dec. 28. All told, the assets of Dallas' 30 banks stood $270 million lower on Dec. 28 than they did 72 hours later at the traditional time for the year-end call.

Most Dallas bankers would be delighted to see a cease-fire in the year-end deposit-padding contest and had no criticism to make of what one vice-president called Saxon's "cute trick." But none was prepared to make any apologies, either. Said one: "Bigness in itself might not be a selling point for a bank anywhere else in the country. But it is here. Our clients want to do business with the biggest and the best. It's part of that Neiman-Marcus thinking."

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