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Show The retirement rule for directors stated that a director was expected to retire when he ceased to hold the position he occupied in his own company when elected to the bank board. This usually happened when the director was 65. It proved difficult to enforce and demonstrated clearly the common philosophy of selecting bank directors. There was no retirement rule for directors emeriti, some of whom continued to come even though not compensated. So the Special Committee recommended the present retirement policies. Pay an attendance fee to the directors emeriti for five years and then flush them out. I stand before you "hoisted on my own petard." The second reason that I now stand before you is that I am a Gentile boy from Utah. It's a long and complicated story but if I'd been Jewish I would have been a Crocker director and phased out with the merger. So as a terminal case I share with you some reflections. I have had the high privilege of sharing the Wells Fargo board room with some wonderful people including those now on the board. When I joined the board, among its members were powerhouses like Wake Baker, Paul Bissinger, Colbert Coldwell, Jim Folger, W. P. Fuller III, Reed Funsten, Wilson Meyer, George Montgomery, and Dave Zellerbach. Jack Countryman and Leonard Firestone came on board later and earlier we could have included Joe Knowland and Roger Lapham, Sr. These people had two characteristics in common. Each was considered a rock-solid pillar of the business community and each headed a profitable company that no longer enjoys an independent existence. Each has a new owner including my own. The decisions on banking relationships are made far from San Francisco. Two of the companies - FMC represented by Paul Davies and Pacific Lighting then represented by Robert Watt Miller and now by his capable son and successor Bob Miller - still thrive but have home offices elsewhere. Only Levi Strauss represented by Don Koshland remains independent and still headquarted in San Francisco. The casualty rate has been very high indeed. But so it has been in the companies comprising the Dow Jones Industrials or the Fortune 500 or the San Francisco banking scene. Under new ownership are venerable names like Anglo-California, Bank of California, Bank of San Francisco, Barclays, Crocker, Canadian Bank of Commerce, The Pacific Bank. The Bank of America has survived but it was close. Union Bank's Report to Shareholders is signed by Messrs. Yamaguchi and Seishichi Itoh. 2. |