Hugh L. McColl, Jr.

Hugh L. McColl Jr. (born 18 June 1935) is a fourth-generation banker and the former Chairman and CEO of Bank of America. Active in banking since around 1960, McColl was a driving force behind consolidating a series of progressively larger, mostly Southern banks, thrifts and financial institutions into a super-regional banking force, "the first ocean-to-ocean bank in the nation's history".

Tony Plath, director of banking studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, described this transformation in 2005 as "the most significant banking story of the late 20th century." In 2012, journalist Matt Taibbi described the transition as "a cartoonish arms race of bank acquisitions that would ultimately turn the American business world upside down". As a young man, McColl along with a colleague had envisioned creating the first truly national bank with branches from coast to coast.

Early life

McColl was born in Bennettsville, South Carolina, to Hugh Leon McColl (1905–1994), a cotton farmer and banker and Frances Pratt Carroll McColl (1906–1987), an artist. He is of Scottish Presbyterian descent and had a sister and two brothers. Their paternal great-grandfather, Duncan Donald McColl (1842–1911) was an attorney who had developed the first railroad (the ''South Carolina Pacific Railway'') and the first cotton mills in Marlboro County. He also founded the Bank of Marlboro, later headed by his son Hugh L. McColl, (1874–1931), followed by his grandson Hugh Leon McColl. McColl's father liquidated the Bank of Marlboro in 1939 during the Great Depression. He later bought a controlling interest in Marlboro Trust Co. As a youth, Hugh McColl went to work part-time at age 14 for the trust company and his father's cotton company, McColl Cotton Mills. He learned to keep books, securing payments, learning double-entry accounting and driving across North and South Carolina to make deposits.

McColl was elected student council president at Bennettsville High School, and class president in his senior year (1953). He was voted Best All-Round Boy in his senior class. His yearbook quotation read: "He who is talented in leadership holds the world's dream in his grip." After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, McColl joined the United States Marine Corps and served a two-year tour of duty. Honorably discharged, he returned to North Carolina. According to McColl, his father pushed him into banking, saying that he "didn't have the brains for farming." McColl married after college. He declined an offer from his father-in-law, John McKee Spratt (1907–1973), a banker, attorney, and judge, to work at the Bank of Fort Mill, a small family-owned bank. McColl accepted his father's arranging an introduction to officers at another bank. Young McColl went to work as a management trainee for American Commercial Bank in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Career

NCNB and Nationsbank

In 1960, a year after McColl joined American Commercial Bank, the bank merged with Greensboro's Security National Bank, becoming North Carolina National Bank. Vigorously competitive, McColl deployed a methodical, military approach to transforming the small regional bank, via incremental acquisitions and mergers, into NationsBank and ultimately Bank of America.

McColl became President of NCNB in 1974 at age 39. In 1982, the bank made its first major out-of-state purchase—First National Bank of Lake City, Florida. This was the first in a wave of mergers and acquisitions during the 1980s. This was initially a defensive measure intended to make NCNB and other major Southern banks too rich to be taken over by New York money center banks. Most of those were orchestrated by McColl, who became CEO in 1983.

NCNB made national headlines with its purchase of the failed First Republic Bank Corporation of Dallas, Texas from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (1988). Over the next few years, it acquired more than 200 thrifts and community banks, many through the Resolution Trust Corporation program (1989 to 1992). In 1991, NCNB bought C&S/Sovran of Atlanta and Norfolk, Virginia, which was the result of a merger a year earlier between Citizens & Southern National Bank of Atlanta and Sovran Bank of Norfolk. The merged bank changed its name to NationsBank.

After the NationsBank merger, the bank acquired Maryland National Corporation (1992), Chicago Research and Trading Group (1993), BankSouth (1995), St. Louis-based Boatmen's Bancshares (1996), Jacksonville, Florida based Barnett Bank (1997) and Montgomery Securities (1997).

Bank of America

In April 1998, under McColl's direction, NationsBank bought San Francisco-based BankAmerica. Although NationsBank was the nominal survivor and the merged bank was (and still is) headquartered in Charlotte, the merged company took the better-known name of Bank of America. Among other later acquisitions, Bank of America in 2004 acquired FleetBoston Financial, thus ultimately holding the country's oldest bank charter (1784).

Strategically, McColl blunted opposition to the bank mergers and acquisitions by pledging in advance billion in loans for low-income neighborhoods, particularly with the creation of NationsBank and Bank of America.

Effect of McColl's merger strategy on financial crisis of 2007–2008

During the financial crisis of 2007-2008, after McColl's retirement, Bank of America was dubbed "too big to fail" and received $45 billion in federal government funds. In a 2012 article for Rolling Stone titled ''Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail,'' author Matt Taibbi attributed factors at Bank of America leading up to the financial crisis of 2007–2008 directly to McColl's creation of a coast to coast bank, saying the "concept of an overmassive, acquiring-everything-in-sight, bicoastal megabank was hatched" in a "terminal inferiority complex" and described McColl (along with Ed Crutchfield of then First Union) as having launched "a cartoonish arms race of bank acquisitions that would ultimately turn the American business world upside down."

Later work

After handing off day-to-day bank operations in 1999 and fully retiring from Bank of America in 2001, McColl partnered with other Charlotte banking executives to form McColl Partners, an investment banking firm which advises mid-sized companies on mergers and acquisitions
with offices in Charlotte and Dallas, co-founded Falfurrias Capital Partners in 2006, a Charlotte-based private equity firm, founded McColl Garella (2002–2006) an investment banking company serving firms owned by women, opened Charlotte-based McColl Fine Art in 2003, and partnered to create New York-based MME Fine Art in 2005. McColl is chairman of MBL Advisors Holdings, LLC (McColl Brother Lockwood), a Charlotte-based company with his son-in-law, Luther Lockwood, as managing principal and providing wealth transfer planning, business succession and executive benefits services to business owners and public company executives. In 2009, McColl Partners joined an international network of investment banks called Clairfield Partners, which collaborates on international deals.

McColl has served on the board of directors of Sykes Enterprises Inc., Canal Industries; Atrium Health, formerly Carolinas HealthCare System; Charlotte Center City Partners; Charlotte Latin School from 1977–1982, Cousins Properties, Inc.; Faison Associates; Foundation for the Carolinas; General Parts, Inc.; NuTech Solutions Inc.; Harris Teeter; and Sonoco Products Company.

Philanthropy, civic involvement

McColl has supported a broad range of academic, civic and arts causes for Charlotte, the state of North Carolina and the Southeast — strongly encouraging Charlotte's urban redevelopment (enabled by Bank of America's revitalization of Fourth Ward and building of Gateway Village in Third Ward), playing a key role in Charlotte's attracting the Carolina Panthers National Football League and the Charlotte Hornets National Basketball Association franchises, supporting Habitat for Humanity, chairing The Forum for Corporate Responsibility (2003), financing inner-city and minority-owned businesses, encouraging light and high-speed rail, and supporting civil rights and gay rights.

The headquarters of the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-Chapel Hill was named the McColl Building upon its completion in 1997 in recognition of McColl's efforts on behalf of his alma mater. McColl has mentored students of the McColl Business School at Queens University of Charlotte where he served on the Board of Trustees for 19 years (1991–2005). McColl gave the initial for Charlotte's Teaching Fellows Institute, and McColl's daughter, Jane McColl Lockwood, is president of Charlotte-based McColl Foundation.

Many of McColl's philanthropic contributions have focused on his family. He endowed the Charlotte Children's Theatre which includes the McColl family Theater, funded the McColl Center for Visual Art

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