Amadeo Peter Giannini Quotes

100 Amadeo Peter Giannini Quotes

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[In 1916] Fresno is as much our home as San Francisco, and we are going to do all possible in financial aid for the businessman and farmer.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

[On the benefits of the Bank of America backing] When we bought the Santa Clara bank the lending limit was $10,000. There happens to be large business there which has seasonal requirements running up to $200,000 to $250,000… It was impossible for that business to satisfy its needs in the local field… The moment we took… over we were able to handle that business locally, and to extend the same lending facilities there as obtained everywhere else throughout our system.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

I am not a millionaire, and I never expect or hope to be one. I have no ambition to become very rich.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

I’ll start a bank of my own and run it according to the principles you refuse to adopt.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

My bank will attend strictly to doing a banking business. There will be no speculative exploits with the bank’s money. Neither will any officer be allowed to speculate or to become financially interested in any other business. We will pay good salaries, and there won’t be any rake-offs of any kind whatsoever.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

[On potential corruption] We will pay good salaries, and there won’t be any rake-offs of any kind whatsoever.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

I am convinced there is room for developing branch banks in some of the territories I used to cover while drumming up produce commission business. Branch banks have been very successful in other countries. They can be made successful in different parts of this state. By opening branches in different localities, we will be able to diversify our business and thus be able to render better and broader service. Crops come on the market at different times in different sections. Growers in one district will be paying off loans at the time growers in another section will be needing funds.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

By building up a big central institution at headquarters, we will be able to engage much abler men than the little, independent isolated banks can afford to employ, and the services of our experienced executives will be available for all our customers whether in San Francisco or in other places. Wherever possible, we shall take over banks already in existence which have earned a good reputation, and we will try to induce the best officers at each bank to continue to serve. Each branch thus acquired will be a feeder of the home institution.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

Various industrial enterprises are becoming so big that they cannot obtain adequate banking facilities from their local banks. With our large capital and surplus, we will be able to give them a much better line of credit.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

While our institution will have a special appeal to the large Italian population of the state, we shall go after every class of business so long as it is legitimate and safe. By building soundly and taking particular care to place ourselves in solid shape whenever it looks as if trouble might lie ahead, we will be able to render assistance when assistance is most needed, and in this way we can inspire absolute faith in our stability and at the same time attract many new friends.
Amadeo Peter Giannini



My working hours have been from eight in the morning until late at night. And then when I go home at night I do all my planning for next day and next week and next year.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

The Bank of Italy (America) is now nearing the point which my commission business reached when I stepped out of it.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

I am turning more and more of the executive responsibilities over to younger men.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

I have always gone in for concentration. I have interested myself only in things of interest to me in my business. I have avoided loading my mind and my memory with stuff of no earthly use to me. I don’t try to keep track of baseball records or golf championship doings or of the latest developments in any line wholly foreign to banking. When I arrange to put up a building, I don’t try to become an expert judge of marbles or other building materials. I don’t, therefore, waste a great deal of time going over details. I know just what kind of a building I want and what facilities must be provided. The execution of the plans I leave to others whose business it is to be posted on such matters.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

While I do most of my own thinking and usually make my own decisions, whenever anything of a particularly ticklish nature comes up and I am not positive as to the best course to follow, I go to some trusted friend and lay the whole matter before him. Usually, I tell him what I propose to do and then ask him to knock holes in it.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

The idea of struggling and scheming to leave millions for other people to spend is the height of foolishness.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

I have seen too many ultra-rich persons who were constantly afraid that some one would put poison…
Amadeo Peter Giannini

I like to keep going all the time. I thrive on obstacles, particularly obstacles placed in my way by narrow-gauged competitors and their political friends. If it hadn’t been that I encountered so much antagonism while I was trying to give the State of California a series of strong, well-managed branch banks, the Bank of Italy (America) today might have been perhaps the three-hundredth in point of size in the United States instead of fourteenth.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

God meant us to work. Those who don’t work never amount to anything.
Amadeo Peter Giannini

[In 1945 at the age of seventy-five to his successors at the Bank of America] If I ever hear that any of you are trying to play the big man’s game and forgetting the same man, I’ll be back in here fighting.
Amadeo Peter Giannini



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