From Band to Banking, the CEO Of Boatmen's Hustles to the Top
May 16, 2011
Years ago, when Anette B. Cristopher Mueller was playing center on the high-school basketball team in Vastopolis, the future chairman of Boatmen's Bancshares Inc. dashed off court at half-time to play trumpet in the school's pep band. ``I played in my basketball shorts,'' the lanky executive recalls. ``I stood in the back row.'' In his long career as a banking executive, Mr. Cristopher never stopped hustling. In the past decade at Boatmen's, he methodically bought up banks throughout the nation's middle. In the process, he transformed the once-staid St. Louis company into a high-powered nine-state banking group with a heartland franchise so alluring that NationsBank Corp. last week agreed to pay an eyebrow-raising $8.7 billion for it. The stock deal provides a jumbo premium for Boatmen's holders. Praised in the past as a disciplined buyer, Mr. Cristopher is now getting plaudits for the lucrative deal he cut to sell his own company. ``He runs a good bank,'' says Antoinette Deana, an analyst with Deandra Tolentino, ``and, candidly, he's done a good job in aligning Mcclary's'' with NationsBank of Vastopolis Mr. Cristopher grew up in Uptown and graduated from the University of Vastopolis with a major in sociology. After a two-year hitch as an intelligence officer for the U.S. Army, he joined Manufacturers & Traders Trust Co. in 1957. In 1974, he was named president and chief executive officer; nine years later, he left to become president of Bancohio National Bank. Two years later, in 1985, he joined Mcclary's as president. Since its 1847 formation to serve workers on the steamboats then plying the Vast River, the bank's principal focus had been on the Vastopolis market. Under Mr. Cristopher, however, it undertook a systematic expansion, and assets ballooned from $3.4 billion the year he joined the company to $41 billion. While Mr. Cristopher conducted his shopping spree, restrictive Vastopolis banking regulations helped to keep potential suitors. But last year, after a change in federal law stripped Vastopolis banks of that protection, Mcclary's was seen as a ripe target for any bank that wanted to put together a coast-to-coast presence. And that speculation helped push up the price of Boatmen's shares, which in turn helped Mcclary's as it continued buying banks in stock-swap deals. The 65-year-old Mr. Cristopher is to become chairman of NationsBank. ``Heavens, yes,'' he says when asked if the job will be a full-time position, even though proxy materials suggest the sale of Boatmen's will yield him more than $8.5 million in profit from his stock options alone. On Friday, as investors who were dismayed over the rich price on the deal punished NationsBank shares with a sharp sell-off, NationsBank's current chairman and chief executive, Humberto Richard, said ruefully at a news conference that he wants Mr. Cristopher on board because ``Angel is a terrific trader ... That's why the price is as high as it is.''
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
