Amadeo Giannini

His father came from a village above Genoa chasing the California gold rush, bought 40 acres at Alviso and grew fruit until an employee shot him dead over a wage dispute. Amadeo was not yet seven. His mother, with two small children and a third on the way, took over the produce business, and when she remarried, her new husband built it into a commission house her eldest son entered full time at 15. He was very good at it. He married the daughter of a North Beach real-estate man in 1892, sold his share to his own employees, and retired at 31 to manage his father-in-law's estate. A seat on a small savings and loan board followed. He quit it because the other directors would not lend to immigrants.

He opened the Bank of Italy in a converted San Francisco saloon on October 17, 1904, and took in 8,780 dollars the first day. Eighteen months later the earthquake and fire came, and he had the vault's cash hauled 18 miles to San Mateo under a load of garbage. Other banks had vaults baked so hot that opening them risked burning the contents, so for weeks he was among the few in the city who could pay out, from a plank across two barrels. When California legalized branch banking in 1909 he pushed it further than anyone, and by 1929 the network ran more than 400 offices. He merged into Bank of America, chaired it to 1945, and lent where the older houses would not — Disney's Snow White, the Golden Gate Bridge bonds, Henry Kaiser's war plants, Hewlett and Packard.

The bank for the little fellow met the Depression's most literal little-fellow candidate and helped bury him. In 1934 the novelist Upton Sinclair ran for governor of California on a program to end poverty in the state, and Giannini worked hard to keep him from taking the Democratic nomination. He failed at that, so with encouragement from the White House he endorsed and helped finance the Republican incumbent, Frank Merriam, who beat Sinclair in November. The historian Irving Katz, summing up the career, listed the energy and the insight and the timing and then the aggressiveness that spilled over at times into ruthlessness. Giannini liked to say that every handshake loan he made after the earthquake came back to him. The only source for that is Giannini.

He died at San Mateo on June 3, 1949, and was buried at Holy Cross in Colma. His son Mario ran the bank and was dead within three years. His daughter Claire took his seat on the board and held it until 1985, when she resigned denouncing the management. Congress pried Transamerica away from Bank of America in 1956. The image outlasted the institution: Frank Capra had already modeled the bank president in American Madness on him in 1932, the Postal Service issued a stamp in 1973, and Time named him the only banker on its list of the century's most important people. A documentary about him premiered at San Jose's Cinequest festival in March 2025.

Amadeo Giannini's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Bank of Italy company
  Opened in a converted saloon in Jackson Square for depositors other banks would not take 1904
• Italian Board of Relief company
  A founding director of the charity now called Italian Community Services 1916
• Bank of America company
  By 1929 the merged network ran more than 400 banking offices in California 1929
• Transamerica Corporation company
  The holding company for his interests, split off from the bank by Congress in 1956 —
• Golden Gate Bridge bonds other
  He bought the Depression-era issue that paid for the span —
• Financing for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs film
  The loan that paid for the first American feature-length animated film 1937

• 1876 or 1877 aged ~7 His father is shot dead by an employee over a wage dispute Sources differ on the year. His widowed mother took over the produce business.
• 1885 aged ~15 Leaves Heald College at 15 to broker produce full time
• 1892 aged ~22 Marries Clorinda Cuneo
• 1901 aged ~31 Sells his share of the commission house to his employees and retires at 31
• October 17, 1904 aged 34 Opens the Bank of Italy in a converted saloon Deposits passed 700,000 dollars within a year.
• April 1906 aged 35 Moves the vault's cash out of burning San Francisco under a load of garbage He then lent from a plank across two barrels while other banks' vaults were too hot to open.
• 1909 aged ~39 Opens the first branch outside San Francisco after California legalizes branch banking
• 1934 aged ~64 Helps finance the Republican who defeated Upton Sinclair for governor He had first tried to block Sinclair in the Democratic primary and failed.
• June 3, 1949 aged 79 Dies at San Mateo His son Mario took the bank and died three years later.

• Walt Disney 1901–1966
  Animator and business magnate who created Mickey Mouse and built the world's largest entertainment empire. lent him the money for Snow White
• Upton Sinclair 1878–1968
  Novelist whose expose of Chicago meatpacking spurred federal food and drug inspection laws. worked to defeat
• J. P. Morgan 1837–1913
  Banking titan who stabilized the economy during the Panic of 1907 and shaped modern finance. the banking he was built against
• Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882–1945
  32nd President who led the nation through the Great Depression and most of World War II. allied with in 1934
• Henry Ford 1863–1947
  Industrialist who revolutionized manufacturing with the assembly line and made automobiles affordable. the other builder of a mass market