Banking: A Novel Celebration

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"I thought they would be dripping chinchilla and mink," said a Seattle society editor, "but they look just like anybody." Maybe so, but the 184 U.S. industrialists, foreign bankers and wives who gathered in Seattle last week were anything but an ordinary group. By one awed (and decidedly exaggerated) estimate, they commanded 90% of the free world's capital. The occasion: a five-day traveling party to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Manhattan-based Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., the largest, and by far the oldest U.S. private bank.

Both the guest list and the itinerary symbolized Brown Brothers Harriman's intimate connections with U.S. industry and global finance. There were such business bigwigs as U.S. Steel's Roger Blough, Bethlehem's Edmund Martin, Columbia Broadcasting's William S. Paley, President Orville Beal of Prudential Insurance, and Texaco Chairman Howard Rambin Jr. Among the foreign bankers: Director Otmar Emminger of West Germany's Deutsche Bundesbank, Governor Louis Rasminsky of the Bank of Canada, Vice Chairman Marcus Wallenberg of the powerful Stockholms Enskilda Bank.

Seating by Computer. Brown Brothers Harriman saw to everyone's comfort with the best of banker-like touches. Computers matched the guests' characteristics to promote compatible seating at dinners. There was an armored car to carry valuables from the Olympic Hotel to Union Station while Chairman William M. Allen of Boeing (a Brown Brothers client) entertained the group at his home after a tour of his company's Renton plant. Then everybody got aboard two 20-car Union Pacific special trains for the long run to Sun Valley, Idaho. There, behind closed doors, they took part in two days of serious talk about world monetary problems. The world's top central banker, Chairman William McChesney Martin of the Federal Reserve Board, joined the discussion.

Personal ties link the partners of Brown Brothers with both the Union Pacific Railroad and the Sun Valley resort. U.S. Ambassador-at-Large W. Averell Harriman, now a limited partner in the firm, was chairman between 1932 and 1946 of the railroad his father once ran. U.P.'s present chairman, E. Roland Harriman, Averell's brother, is a partner in the bank. As for Sun Valley, Averell Harriman started it 32 years ago as one of the U.S.'s first major ski resorts. (The railroad sold it in 1964.)

Serving the Wealthy. If the celebration was novel, so is the bank that sponsored it. "People have a terrible time trying to understand Brown Brothers Harriman," says Partner Thomas McCance, 66. "We perform an unusual set of services, and 150 years ago they forgot to put the word 'bank' in our name."