YOU CAN'T DIE FOR A DOLLAR/ Amadeo Peter Giannini, the revolution of trust that changed the USA
At the Meeting, an exhibition on Amedeo Peter Giannini, the Italian who conquered the USA with a bank that helped businesses grow and helped people.
“While most people are familiar with the name J.P. Morgan , it can be argued that Amadeo Peter Giannini had an even greater influence on modern banking. Giannini saw opportunity where others saw only risk, revolutionizing the banking industry, making financial services accessible to ordinary people, not just the wealthy elite.” Warren Buffett , one of the most influential businessmen alive today, describes Amadeo Giannini (1870-1949), Italian-American banker and founder of Bank of America.
These days, at the Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples, you can visit an exhibition that traces the history of one of the most influential people of his time, an advisor to President Roosevelt, the primary financier of the San Francisco Bridge and Hewlett-Packard, when no financial institution believed in these projects.
The son of Ligurian immigrants, he lost his father, who was killed before his eyes by one of his workers who was demanding undue money. From an early age, he learned from his mother and stepfather the value of work, as a tool for man to shape himself and reality.
From a young age, he often uttered the phrase “you can’t die for a dollar,” aware of the value of human life, but also of that of money, seen as a tool for building something and not as an end in itself: he said that “success is not measured by the amount of money you have but by the amount of positive impact you have on the lives of others.”
He began his career in the fruit trade between San José and San Francisco, working in his stepfather's business and helping it grow, introducing account credit mechanisms to his suppliers (often small farmers excluded from the banking system) that allowed them to invest and grow their businesses.
Based on this insight, in 1904 he founded a small bank, the Bank of Italy, which, in a banking environment that (at the time) did not grant loans below $5,000, began granting loans as low as $25, without requiring collateral. "The best collateral for me is the calluses on my hands and a ring on my finger," meaning the will to work and the desire to build something good for one's family and the community in which one lives. Giannini wanted those who requested a loan to be evaluated first and foremost as individuals, and not solely on the basis of numbers.
Deeply aware of how even a banking institution can have a positive impact on society, just two days after the terrible San Francisco earthquake of 1906, while all national banks closed, the Bank of Italy reopened, granting credit to those who, despite having lost their homes or businesses, wanted to start over.
In the following years, the bank grew and became more structured. Giannini recognized the need to divide the bank into different specialized sectors, each based on client origins (Italian, Irish, Portuguese) and their respective industrial areas. He even opened a women's bank , a branch entirely run by women and for women. Giannini saw his employees as missionaries, called upon to support clients with bureaucracy, but also in business negotiations and even thorny family matters.
Even during the 1929 crisis, no employees were laid off, despite significant pay cuts being necessary, and this allowed the bank to recover, opening branches throughout the United States and becoming what is now known as Bank of America. As one of his collaborators testified, the key to his success was that he "looked a man in the eye and convinced him that almost anything was possible."
Upon his death in 1949, he left behind the world's largest bank by market capitalization, yet his assets totaled $489,000. At the time, rival JP Morgan had over $14 million in personal wealth. Giannini had in fact decided to dedicate half of his fortune to the creation of a charitable foundation, which still bears his name today, urging his heirs to "do good and not merely theorize about goodness."
Amadeo Peter Giannini is an example of how subsidiarity can be applied even in the for-profit world, even in banking. He shows how doing business is first and foremost about contributing to society and therefore to the development of the common good, conceiving oneself not as a single entity whose primary goal is the accumulation of money, but from a community perspective, recognizing that the well-being of the individual cannot be separated from the impact of one's actions on those around them.
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