WSJ
Andrew Craig Helped Lead Wave of Consolidation Among U.S. Banks
CEO built Boatmen’s into a big regional player, then extracted a rich price from NationsBank
By
June 7, 2019 10:30 a.m. ET
Emerging from Army service in 1957, Andrew Craig had job offers from International Business Machines Corp. and a drug company. He saw more opportunity in banking.
When he interviewed at banks, he wrote later, “I remember looking at their senior executives, who were all nearing retirement age, and thinking, ‘I want their jobs!’ ”
Mr. Craig, who died May 24 at age 88, went into banking when it was mostly a local business. By the time he retired, he had helped lead a consolidation wave that eliminated thousands of banks and created a few giants operating across the nation.
As CEO of St. Louis-based Boatmen’s Bancshares Inc. from 1988 to 1996, he used acquisitions to build a strong regional banker in nine central states. He gave executives baseball bats embossed with the order to “hit singles,” rather than swinging wildly for the fences. By the mid-1990s, consolidation by bigger banks made Boatmen’s look more like prey than a predator.
Mr. Craig agreed to sell Boatmen’s to NationsBank Corp. for $9.5 billion in 1996. The offer was about 2.7 times book value at a time when twice book value was considered pricey.
Mr. Craig served for 16 months as chairman of NationsBank. In 1998, NationsBank merged with BankAmerica Corp. and adopted the Bank of America name.
Reflecting consolidation, the number of U.S. commercial banks with federally insured deposits shrank to 8,777 in 1998 from 13,165 when Mr. Craig began his career 41 years earlier.
NationsBank’s CEO, Hugh McColl, was so eager to buy Boatmen’s that he arrived for negotiations in St. Louis in a Cardinals baseball cap. “Andy is a terrific trader,” Mr. McColl said after signing the deal. “That’s why the price is as high as it is.”
After retiring from Bank of America, Mr. Craig helped found a venture-capital firm, RiverVest Venture Partners. |
