The Plum at First National City

Command changes at major banks are usually about as suspenseful as tomorrow's office hours. But not at Manhattan's aggressive First National City Bank. President George S. Moore, 62, was a cinch to succeed Chairman James Stillman Rockefeller, due to retire next month at 65. But who would follow Moore? There was no lack of topflight candidates, as is only fitting for the bank that, with assets of $15 billion, ranks only behind the Bank of America ($18 billion) and Chase Manhattan ($15.8 billion). Moore himself had been no help in the guessing game, having once said that any one of the bank's six executive vice presidents and most of the 36 senior V.P.s could handle the job. Headlined the Wall Street Journal as speculation grew: PRESIDENCY CONTEST IS NEARING SHOWDOWN.

Last week it came. First, the bank's 25-man board, as expected, named Moore chairman. Then Thomas R. Wilcox, 50, the peppery executive vice president in charge of the bank's domestic branches and a leading candidate for Moore's job, was made a vice chairman. But the plum went to Walter B. Wriston, 47, executive V.P. for overseas operations. Since Moore himself was only three years from retirement, said the bank, new President Wriston would lose no time getting into "the maximum possible responsibilities."

Chile to Chad. Those have expanded mightily in the bank's eight years under Chairman Rockefeller (distant cousin of Chase Manhattan President David) and President Moore. Aggressively pursuing "retail" banking business, First National City's domestic branches have spurted from 84, all in New York City, to 166, spilling into the populous suburbs. Earnestly following the expansion of U.S. business abroad, the bank's overseas branches have more than doubled to 206 in spots from Chile to Chad. And having pioneered the personal loan in 1928, the bank now offers nearly every kind of financial service from a mutual fund, which was started last year amid much controversy, to credit cards (it owns 50% of Carte Blanche).

Educated at Wesleyan and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Wriston has had a hand in much of First National City's expansion. The son of Henry Merritt Wriston, longtime (1937-55) president of Brown University, he joined the bank in 1946 after a stint in the foreign service and wartime Army duty, has headed the bank's sprawling overseas division since 1959. Amiably informal and scornful of organization charts--"We all work together," he says, "and when I'm in trouble I ask somebody, and when I'm not I don't"--Wriston helped initiate many of First National City's innovations. It was he who, with another staffer, "invented" the negotiable certificates of deposit in 1961. The CDs, as they are known, have since helped banks to recoup a lot of badly needed corporate deposits, which had been flowing into treasury bills and other short-term notes.

Such innovations have necessarily put the heat on the bank's perennial rival, the Chase, which has yet to match First National City's steps into traveler's checks and travel-and-entertainment credit cards, has far fewer suburban and overseas branches. Part of Wriston's franchise will be to keep the ideas coming--within limits. He still remembers Moore's whimsical advice: "Be so brave as to scare the Chase, but never be so brave as to scare me."

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