Dead Bank Walking: One Gutsy Bank's Struggle for Survival and the Merger That Changed Banking Forever

Dead Bank Walking begins innocently enough when Smith assists real estate developer Charles Keating in his acquisition of Lincoln Savings. This act and the resulting S&L crisis trigger a chain reaction of legislation, regulatory crackdowns, and economic difficulties that threaten the very existance of Security Pacific.

The story includes a virtual Who's Who of politics and Wall Street: Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, Alan Greenspan, Bill Seidman, Carl Reichardt, Pete Wilson, Bob Campeau, Chris Hemmeter, Peter Ueberroth and many other movers and shakers.

Dead Bank Walking shuttles the reader from elaborate bankers conventions in Hawaii to contentious Board Rooms. It peeks through the crevices of high finance, as Smith and Richard Flamson--an outspoken and gutsy chairman dying of a rare blood disease--embark on a strategic acquisition spree that ultimately extends the bank's vision to include worldwide securities companies and a controversial and ultimately dangerous Merchant Bank.

Too far too fast? Absolutely. When economic recession pounds California and Security Pacific's stock slides, consultants warn management to halt the acquistions and if possible locate a merger partner. If Smith can't, the Board will find someone who can. A potentially momentous merger with Wells Fargo Bank falls through at the eleventh hour and an uncanny sequence of events brings Security Pacific to the brink of disaster. Smith's colorful management team labors to solve the problems and ultimately embarks on a year-long odyssey with Richard Rosenberg, Chairman and CEO of Bank of America.

Smith recounts in vivid detail, the triumphs, disasters, mind-games, insults, ego trips, walk-outs, and layoffs as he and Rosenberg work, sometimes at cross purposes, to create the most powerful bank in the United States, often in the face of ridiculous forces that seek to derail the merger at every juncture. Near the end, Smith realizes that he stands to lose everything--from his personal wealth to his reputation--should the deal collapse. In a final life and death episode, he faces a potential $1 billion penalty that may represent a material breach of the merger agreement. Smith partners up with brilliant attorneys for an almost hallucinatory last dance with the Internal Revenue Service in order to preserve the merger and save his own scalp. And lingering beneath the deal is the unfathomable bureaucracy of Bank of America, a foreboding maze of committees which in the end destroys the most unique and valuable assets of the institution it works so hard to acquire.

Fifty percent comedy, fifty percent tragedy, Dead Bank Walking is an exhilarating, timely and supremely unique business story populated by a cast of characters one would expect to find only in a work of fiction. Read it, and never think of your bank--or the people who run it--in the same way again.

If you have ever faced mergers, regulators, stockholders and/or employees during difficult times, you can relate to Smith's story. If you haven't, read the story! There are great lessens here.


A Good Quick Read for Current/Former Employees...   May 29, 2000
6 out of 8 found this review helpful

3-1/2 stars.

Mainly of interest to people employed in the banking/financial services industry, especially those with some connection to Bank of America or Security Pacific - like me. Don't imagine this book would thrill the average reader; agree with comment that potential buyers should wait for the book to end up in the bargain bin.


If You Were There......   May 3, 2000
4 out of 7 found this review helpful

In general, I agree with all of the reviews by the folks who understood Security Pacific, and, disagree with all of those who had no other knowledge of Security Pacific than Bob's book. I do agree that the book did read like a novel and it did sound like Bob, who at times was a likeable person to be around, however that doesn't offset the many "un" and "half" truths potrayed in this book.

I was very surprised to find out just how bad off we were, so I do agree with the person that said Bob did a good job of keeping that information from the troops. But to what avail? Bob did sell the employees down the river. If you didn't get layed off, you were very poorly treated by B of A employees and management, and it's unbelievable that Bob didn't forsee that.

I believe that, with all of the innovation exhibited by Security Pacific employees in the past, in both financial and technical aspects, had Bob been a forthright and competent leader, Security Pacific would not have failed.


Informative, engaging, insightful, authoritative account.   April 6, 2000
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful

Dead Bank Walking showcases the historic merger between Security Pacific and the Bank of America which combined to financial corporate giants and set in motion an avalanche of banking marriages and mergers which continues to the present time. In Dead Bank Walking, Robert Smith explains the causes and rationales of this mega-merger which is an exemplar of all corporate merger strategies, objectives, and hazards. Smith evokes the humor and frantic chaos surrounding the deal that is still considered as either a brilliant coup or a tragic error of judgement with lasting implications and effects on banking sovereignty and independence. Dead Bank Walking will prove informative, engaging, insightful, authoritative, explanatory reading of interest to students of economics, the banking system, and the phenomena of the mega-merger.