BUSINESS PEOPLE (original) (raw)
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- May 23, 1979
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May 23, 1979
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Daniel P. Davison, one of the brightest stars at the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, has left that blue‐chip bank to become president and chief operating officer of the United States Trust Company of New York. He succeeds Tom Killefer, who continues as chairman and chief executive officer of the bank, one of the nation's largest trust and investment managers, with $11.5 million in assets under supervision.
Until last Monday, Mr. Davison was executive vice president in charge of Morgan Guaranty's national banking division. In changing jobs, he is also expected to be named president of the U.S. Trust Corporation, the bank's parent corporation. The holding company was established last June.
“Everybody knows the name U.S. Trust on Wall Street,” the 54‐year‐old Mr. Davison said yesterday. “I'd like to help make it more profitable.”
Earnings of U.S. Trust before securities transactions have increased during the last four years from 8.4millionto8.4 million to 8.4millionto10.1 million. However, they are still below the peak of $11 million reached in 1974.
Mr. Killefer is 62 years old, and U.S. Trust has a mandatory retirement age of 65. He was recruited by the bank as president in 1976 from the Chrysler Corporation, where he had been executive vice president‐finance. He added the titles of chief executive officer and chairman in succession the same year.
Mr. Davison, who had been with Morgan Guaranty and one of its predecessors for 23 years, rising through the ranks, joined the bank as corporate secretary. Previously, he was an associate with the law firm of White & Case. He noted that he had been approached directly by U.S. Trust about three months ago and that he had taken the position because “it's an opportunity to run a company that's got an absolutely wonderful name.”
Both Mr. Killefer and Mr. Davison, whose first day on the job at U.S. Trust will be next Monday, are lawyers. When asked whether a legal background is particularly useful to the chief officers of a major bank, naturally enough Mr. Davison responded affirmatively. “Everything we do now is touched by the law,” he said.
Leo L. Mellam was born on a farm in Broken Bow, Neb., 72 years ago, but he showed earlier this week that he was no naive country boy when his company, the Flexi‐Van Corporation, made a bid to acquire Seaboard World Airlines for $124 million.
“I was in Hawaii when Kidder Peabody told our people about Seaboard,” he said yesterday in an interview. “I told my people that it didn't cost any money to look. And it looked to me like a proper entree into the aircraft leasing business.”
Mr. Mellam, the Chairman of FlexiVan, is considered a pioneer in containerization, the concept of shipping containers that can be used on all modes of transportation. Since he joined the company in 1965, he built it into a major lessor of cargo containers, trucks, tractors and trailers throughout the world.
“My father died while I was a freshman in high school and I had to take it from there myself,” he observed. “After leaving school I did a lot of things and finally lit on transportation as being a good field.”
Trucking was Mr. Mellam's specialty, and he spent 19 years with big trucker. Watson Brothers of Omaha. In 1956, Alfred E. Perlman, then head of the New York Central Railroad, hired Mr. Mellam to take over its fledgling trucking unit, New York Cental Transport. Ten years later, Mr. Mellam left the railroad to give Flexi‐Van his fulltime attention.
A shy and unlikely participant in the big‐money game of mergers and acquisitions — an unfriendly suitor for SeaWard is Tiger International, owner of the Flying Tiger Line — Mr. Mellam says that he has no intention of retiring. “I think you get as old as you make yourself,” he asserted. “As long as my health's good, I ought to be in there swinging.”
Brokerage Partnership for Brooke
Former Senator Edward W. Brooke has agreed in principle to become limited partner, of Bear, Stearns & Company, the investment banking and brokerage concern. A spokesman for the firm confirmed the agreement, but said that, because the formal partnership had not been signed, no one at Bear Stearns would comment on the arrangement.
The 59‐year‐old Massachusetts Republican, who was reported to be on his honeymoon yesterday following his remarriage, lost his bid for re‐election to a third term last year following his involvement in a bitter, much‐publicized divorce. The only black to serve in the Senate since Reconstruction, he had been a member of the securities, financial institutions and housing and urban affairs subcommittees.
Wall Street sources said that Mr. Brooke would be an outside investor in Bear Stearns and would not serve in any management capacity. He is believed to have known some of the firm's partners for many years.
After leaving the Senate, Mr. Brooke, a former Attorney General of Massachusetts, took the unpaid job of lobbyist for a new group called the National Low‐Income Housing Coalition. He said last month that he was negotiating for a job with law firms in Washington, New York and Boston and that he planned to write a book.
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