Things have changed but there is nothing new about change. What has changed is the pace of change. Things happen so much faster now. We no longer can enjoy the luxury of slow reaction time. You'd better be quick or you'll be dead. This is going to demand top quality both at the management level and at the board level. One has to wonder how many of our competitors would have survived if they had had better boards of directors and better top management which is the ultimate responsibility of the board. At least three of these boards - perhaps too late - have fired the chief executive officer in the last two decades and one twice. Wells Fargo has been more blessed both at the board level and at the management level. It has not always been so. As a one-time treasurer I learned the hard way that there was at least one top officer of The American Trust Company that you needed to deal with before ten in the morning if you were to have any chance of his remembering the agreement you'd reached. But since I have been on this board the caliber of the management has steadily improved. Starting with Ransom Cook, accelerating with Dick Cooley and Ernie Arbuckle, Cooley and Reichardt, and now Reichardt and Hazen, each building on the good work of its predecessors until we now have in place a top management team of truly top quality. Genuinely good managers welcome the guidance and help that really good directors can give. Good managers can perform reasonably well even with a mediocre board but it is extra baggage that they don't need and that they may get tired of toting. It was customary in former days for bank directors to be chosen because they were representative of a special constituency. Maybe they could influence deposits. Maybe they could help entice customers. Maybe they were considered pillars of the community, rock-solid like bank buildings suggesting soundness and affluence. But none of these considerations - including race and religion - is sound grounds for the selection of directors in today's world with the challenges of today and tomorrow. We need to be forever vigilant in bringing into the board room only directors that can genuinely contribute to the sound management of the enterprise. 3.