Anthony M. Frank

Anthony M. Frank (born May 21, 1931 in Berlin ) is a German-American bank manager. Under his leadership, the First Nationwide Bank in San Francisco, the first nationwide and sixth largest savings and loan bank in the United States, emerged from a small regional savings bank from 1971 to 1988. From 1988 to 1992 he was Postmaster General of the United States .

origin

Anton (Melchior) Frank, Americanized Anthony M. Frank, was born on May 21, 1931 in Berlin as the son of Lothar Frank (1900–1985) and Elisabeth Frank. Roth (1901–1969) born. Lothar Frank was the son of a Stuttgart banker and had a doctorate in economics before joining his father's bank as a partner. In the 1930s he was a manager in a Berlin coal company. Elisabeth Frank had a doctorate in law and political science and was a lecturer at adult education centers in Germany. In 1936 the family of Jewish descent fled the Nazis to the USA, where they settled in Hollywood . Lothar Frank worked as a securities broker and investment advisor, Elisabeth Frank held a senior position for the Los Angeles County 's private welfare agency.

Life and work

Source: #Moritz 1991 .

education

Anthony M. Frank graduated from the "world-famous" Hollywood High School in Hollywood , which he graduated in 1949 at the age of eighteen. The majority of the prominent former students later took up a career in the film industry. Frank's classmates Mitzi Gaynor and Stuart Whitman also started a career as film actors. For his university education, Anthony Frank went to the east coast, where he studied for the next few years at Dartmouth College in Hanover , New Hampshire , one of the "oldest and most renowned institutions in the USA". His fellow students were the film directors Bob Rafelson and James Goldstone and the film producer David Picker. In 1953 he passed his bachelor's degree and in 1954, at the age of twenty-three, earned an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, the “world's first graduate school for management”.

On October 16, 1954, he married Gay Palmer (1929-2006). From 1954 to 1956 he did his military service in the intelligence service of the US Army, the greater part of it in the Federal Republic of Germany. After his release, he completed a subsequent degree in finance at the University of Vienna.

Managerial career

Anthony Frank came from a family of bankers. His father Lothar Frank and his grandfather Sigismund Frank had been partners in a private bank in Germany. Anthony Frank continued the family tradition when he began his career as a bank manager in 1958 and held several senior management positions in various California financial institutions in the thirteen years to 1971.

year	Companies	function
1958	Glendale Federal Savings Association	Bond manager and assistant to the president
1961	Far West Financial Corporation, Los Angeles	Vice President and Finance Director
1961	First Charter Financial Corporation, Beverly Hills	Vice President for Administration, responsible for the savings department
1966-1968	State Mutual Savings and Loan Association, Los Angeles	president
1969-1970	Titan Group (finance company), Los Angeles / New York City	director
1970-1971	INA Properties (real estate division of INA Corporation)	president

First Nationwide

Citizens Savings

In 1971, Anthony Frank took over the position of President of Citizens Savings and Loan in San Francisco. He dedicated the next seventeen years of his life to this bank, which was renamed First Nationwide in 1982. Under his leadership, the company grew from a modest regional bank with assets of $ 400 million to the sixth largest savings bank in the United States, with assets of $ 19 billion.
At a time when other savings bank managers were pushing expansion with risky junk bonds , Anthony Frank pursued a conservative lending policy. He selected the middle class as the target group and limited lending to first mortgages, business loans and second mortgages, he excluded from his portfolio .

Acquisition by National Steel

The broadening of the capital base following the acquisition of Citizens by National Steel Corporation in 1980 enabled Anthony Frank to embark on an unprecedented expansion program in 1981. With support from the relevant government agencies, he bought two savings and loan banks: Washington Savings and Loan in Miami , and the West Side Savings and Loan in New York City. This made Citizens the first savings and loan company to operate across state borders.
The renaming of the bank on January 1, 1982 reflected in the name First Nationwide (Federal Savings and Loan Association), from 1986 First Nationwide Bank, the interstate activities of the bank again. The bank overnight became one of the largest savings banks in the United States, with $ 7 billion in assets and 136 branches in California, Florida, and New York.
In the following years, Anthony Frank continued to expand, sometimes with unconventional means. So he gradually opened 170 branches in Kmart department stores with the aim of "bringing the bank to the customer" and thereby conquering a new group of customers. However, since the Kmart bank branches unexpectedly generated only a small turnover, they were given up again in the late 1980s. In order to get a quick presence in as many states as possible, he offered other savings banks franchise agreements that gave them the opportunity to sell credit cards and other products under the First Nationwide name. By 1989, First Nationwide had 53 franchisees in 37 states.

Takeover by Ford

At the instigation of Anthony Frank, Ford Motor Company acquired First Nationwide in December 1985 for $ 493 million. With the new owner's capital resources behind him, he attempted to acquire the savings and loan division of the troubled Financial Corporation of America, which would have made First Nationwide the largest savings bank in the country at one stroke. To his great disappointment, however, someone else was awarded the contract. Ford management, getting involved in the day-to-day running of his new daughter, heightened the frustration of a man who was used to making decisions autonomously.

Crisis and change of leadership

The unsuccessful takeover of the Financial Corporation of America and the influence of the Ford management led Anthony Frank to look for a new job and at the beginning of February 1988 took over the post of Postmaster General, see #Generalpostmeister . But the bank's critical economic situation may also have contributed to this decision.

When he turned his back on the bank, he left behind a savings empire with 370 branches in 14 states and assets of $ 19 billion. He had attracted nationwide attention through his innovative corporate policy, had implemented the concept of supra-regional savings banks as a pioneer and made First Nationwide the sixth largest savings bank in the country.

The rapid growth through the acquisition of ailing financial institutions took its toll. It had bloated the bank into a ponderous, loosely connected conglomerate. Earnings have not kept pace with the rapid expansion and the bank's results have stagnated in recent years. According to journalist Andrew Pollack, Anthony Frank was more of a visionary than a practitioner, he believed that his company's cost control was too slack and that profits were below those of the best competitors. After all, in the 17 years under Anthony Frank's leadership, the bank has always enjoyed positive results and the highest credit ratings . The bank's problematic situation was exacerbated by the dramatic, general savings bank crisis of the 1980s.

The Ford management also recognized the bank's imbalance. After Anthony Frank's departure, Ford manager John Devine was appointed as the new president in September 1988, who was supposed to overcome the bank's crisis by cutting costs and shrinking the empire.

Postmaster General

United States Postal Service's headquarters in Washington, 475 L'Enfant Plaza SW.

The post of postmaster general was a "hot seat": in the 27 years from 1961 to 1988, the incumbents had changed on average every 2.5 years, although the maximum term of office was eight years. In 1988, when Postmaster General Preston Robert Tisch announced his intention to resign after only a year and a half, Anthony Frank applied for the post. On February 2, 1988, he was elected 69th Postmaster General.

The US Postal Service, the country's largest semi-public corporation, was fraught with grave problems when he took office. Personnel costs consumed 84% of the total budget. In order to contain the steadily increasing deficits, far-reaching cost savings were urgently required. Congress also threatened budget cuts, competition with private industry intensified, and the company had to cope with an annual increase of two million customers.

Anthony Frank fought vehemently against efforts in the administration of President Ronald Reagan to privatize the post office. In a pamphlet he pledged to increase efficiency, but rejected the "Balkanization" of the company. An unconventional contract with an external consulting firm, which was supposed to reduce the losses of the post office by a billion dollars, failed because of the objection of the administration, the reduction of the personnel costs because of the resistance of the unions. So he switched to technical and organizational rationalization measures. He promoted the fully automated processing of mail with barcode scanners and sorting devices, founded post shops in shopping centers, expanded the two most profitable branches of business, the express mail service and the philately service, introduced a company suggestion system and a bonus program to increase customer satisfaction.

In view of constantly rising personnel costs and a deficit of 1.6 billion dollars, Anthony Frank implemented a postage increase in March 1990, which, however, only alleviated the basic problems, but did not eliminate them. The Post also suffered, as he regretfully admitted when he left, from an autocratic leadership style that bore paramilitary features. Despite selective improvements, he had not succeeded in fundamentally changing this corporate culture . Several rampages by postal workers, including one during his tenure, had exposed the leadership problem. The term “ going postal ” was even used as a pseudonym for a rampage.

Anthony Frank, like most of his predecessors, did not exhaust the maximum term of eight years, but submitted his resignation after four years on Independence Day on July 4, 1992.

politics

Anthony Frank became involved in the Democratic Party from 1968. In the same year he supported Alan Cranston as a fundraiser in the Senatorial election campaign and was sent as a delegate for the election of Robert F. Kennedy to the party convention in Chicago.

The President of the Organizing Committee for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, Peter Ueberroth , sent Anthony Frank to East Berlin for mediation talks in 1984. However, he did not succeed in persuading the GDR to participate in the games despite the boycott of the Soviet Union.

Although a registered member of the Democratic Party, he supported Senator Robert J. Dole's nomination as a Republican presidential candidate in 1988 as a fundraiser .

family

On October 16, 1954, Anthony married Frank Gay Palmer (1929-2006). She worked as an organizer of adventure trips, for example to Tibet and Antarctica, and died in 2006 at the age of 77. The marriage produced two children: Tracy F. Frank (* 1954) and Randall P. Frank (* 1961).

various

During his tenure, Frank made two short appearances ( cameo ) in well-known television series.

In 1990 he appeared in a lead story ( teaser ) for the sitcom Cheers . The drunk postman Cliff is dozing in the Boston Bar Cheers when he is amazed to see how Postmaster General Frank is escorted into the bar by secret agents. Frank awards Cliff the "Golden Mailbag" medal as "Postman of the Year" and launches one of the "little-known facts" in the manner of the know-it-all Cliff. For reasons unknown, the scene that was shot was not broadcast.

In 1991 Frank made a guest appearance on the television series Murder Is Her Hobby , Season 7, Episode 22 (The Skinny According to Nick Cullhane / The Hunt for the Manuscript). In it he played the role of Jessica Fletcher's postman Mr. Finnerty. He was featured in the credits under "and Postmaster General ANTHONY FRANK as The Mailman". The episode aired on May 12, 1991 and is also available on DVD (Season 7, Part 2).

literature

• Anthony M. Frank: Efficiency, Yes; Balkanization, No. In: Peter J. Ferrara: Free the Mail: Ending the Postal Monopoly. Washington 1990, pages 47-53 online: .
• Randall Frank: About family Frank , 2015, online: .
• Don Lasseter: Going Postal  : Madness and Mass Murder in America's Post Offices. New York 1997, online: .
• Frank, Anthony M. In: Charles Moritz (Editor): Current Biography Yearbook 1991 , Volume 52. New York 1991, pages 226-229.
• Dave Mote: First Nationwide Bank History. In: Tina Grant (editor): International Directory of Company Histories , Volume 14, 1996, pages 191-193, online: .
• Andrew Pollack: Fine-Tuning for First Nationwide. In: The New York Times of 12 January 1989, online: .
• Jacqueline Trescott: Postmaster General: A Stamp of Approval in Some Quarters. In: The Washington Post , December 25, 1989, online: .
• Frank, Anthony Melchior. In: Who's Who in America 1998 , Volume 1: A – K. New Providence, NJ 1998, 1408.

Footnotes

1. ↑ Self-promotion on the Hollywood High School website .
2. ↑ English Wikipedia: en: Hollywood High School # Alumni .
3. ^ Dartmouth College .
4. ↑ # Trescott 1989 .
5. ^ Website of the Tuck School
6. ↑ "bond manager".
7. ↑ "treasurer".
8. ^ "Administrative Vice-President in Charge of Savings".
9. ↑ #Pollack 1989 .
10. ↑ #Pollack 1989 : "Frank what known more as a visionary leader than to operations you. First Nationwide's cost controls were widely viewed as lax, and profits were below those of its best competitors. "
11. ↑ #Mote 1996 .
12. ↑ #Frank, Anthony 1990 .
13. ↑ Essays.pw , #Lasseter 1997 .
14. ↑ #Lasseter 1997 , page 182nd
15. ↑ # Trescott 1989 .
16. ↑ Golden Mailbag = golden mailbag.
17. ^ Internet Movie Database .