Martin G. McGuinn: A Great American Life

On April 26, I got a brief email from Marty McGuinn complimenting me on a remembrance column I’d written a few days earlier on Dick Simmons. I thanked Marty and added, “I’ve only helped two guys with their autobiographies…” The two were Dick and Marty. I didn’t know then that Marty’s time was short.

Marty and I had known each other since he was CEO of Mellon and I was business editor at the Post-Gazette. The relationship was cordial but often strained given the paper’s coverage of Mellon and his reaction to that coverage. In the 20 years since I left the paper, we saw each other socially – he was a friendly, gregarious guy – and you couldn’t help but enjoy being around him. That relationship deepened five years ago after he read Dick’s autobiography and asked whether I’d be interested in doing the same with him.

When you spend 20 hours interviewing and conversing with someone about their life from birth on and working together for countless more hours turning those interviews into a book, you get to know them pretty well. And in the three days since Marty passed away Monday night. I’ve re-read the book we did together: “From Swampoodle to Mellon Bank CEO; An Irish American’s Journey, the Autobiography of Martin G. McGuinn Jr.”

On the sad occasion of Marty’s passing, I’d like to give my impressions of the remarkable life he led and the outstanding man that he was.

He was born in Philadelphia, the oldest of four in an Irish family on both sides. Though he spent his early years in Philadelphia and Hershey, he considered Princeton, NJ to be his hometown. He graduated from Princeton High School, which was then ranked in the top 10 U.S. public high schools, and as he said, he had several bona fide geniuses as classmates – many were children of Princeton University’s greatest professors.

The template of Marty’s life came into view there, in Princeton High School. His family didn’t have money to spare, so if Marty wanted spending money for whatever reason, including going on dates, he worked. And he worked summers, during the school year, after school and on weekends at a variety of jobs: shoe store, clothing store, flower delivery, lifeguard, camp counsellor and state road construction crew.

In that outstanding high school, he was one of the most outstanding members. He ran sprints and the quarter mile in track, started on the varsity basketball team and was the starting catcher on the 1960 state champion baseball team. He was a member of the chorus, going to summer school in order to learn to read music, and becoming president of the high school choir. In what Marty quipped was “one of my greatest claims to fame,” he appeared twice on “American Bandstand,” the nationally televised teenage dance show, shot in nearby Philadelphia. In his second appearance, he and his partner appeared in the show’s “Spotlight Dance” in which two or three couples were chosen and the camera focused on them. “It turned out it was a war,” Marty said. “The regulars on the show were trying to elbow you out of the spotlight.”

At Villanova University, he was elected president of the sophomore class and, as a senior, president of Student Council. In 1962, he enlisted in the Marine Corps to support his country, but also with an eye on a possible future political career, and to preserve his ability to go to law school if the Vietnam War continued.

He was commissioned as a second lieutenant and then deferred to go to Villanova Law School, where he became editor of the law review. After graduation, at the height of the Vietnam War in 1968, he arrived in Vietnam, outside of Da Nang, where he spent 13 months active duty, serving as a lawyer and then chief trial counsel, assigning cases and making decisions for the 15 lawyers of the First Marine Division, one of two divisions in Vietnam. And he was involved in all manner of cases, including capital cases. Marty revered the Marines and, upon receiving an award from the Marines a decade ago, gave a speech about “What the Marine Corps Means to Me.” He considered the Marine Corps to be one of the most elite organizations in the world. As he said, “elite in the best sense of the word.”

His first job after the Marines came in 1970 with the prestigious New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, falling accidentally into corporate legal work – securities, acquisitions, and bank financing and mergers. The six and a half years there would set the direction of his career.

In 1977, he started at the Singer Company at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, just below the “Top of the Rock.” In his second week on the job, he uncovered a major price-fixing scheme at American Meter Company, one of Singer’s subsidiaries. It was a baptism of fire, and he spent three years there as Managing Counsel, Consumer Products before coming to Pittsburgh and joining Mellon Bank in 1981 as General Counsel. He set about hiring lawyers and creating what he called “A Captive Law Firm,” an in-house law firm to do the corporation’s legal business, rather than relying largely on outside counsel. Ultimately, Mellon had more than 120 lawyers.

A key part of his role became helping and working with the hard-driving and brusque Mellon CEO Frank Cahouet, deftly navigating a 1987 crisis that threatened Mellon with bankruptcy.

In 1989, Marty became a vice chairman and over a few years became responsible for leading an increasing number of bank operations: real estate lending, mortgage servicing, cash management and finally, retail banking. He instituted sweeping changes designed to make retail banking more customer friendly, responsive and flexible.

In 1998, he became Chairman and CEO of Mellon Bank. Immediately, he changed the name to Mellon Financial Corporation, signifying the change from a traditional bank into faster growing businesses such as asset management and asset servicing – and ultimately out of retail. He also emphasized changing Mellon’s internal culture to improve morale. He created “The Employer of Choice” program, improving employee benefits, providing early domestic partner benefits and creating employee stock options.

The year 2001 was a tumultuous one for Marty and Mellon. In partnership with the IRS, Mellon’s cash management business built a new, state-of-the-client service center on Ross Street to handle IRS tax returns. Despite back-ups, safeguards and redundancies in the 24/7 plant, a couple of workers panicked when they got behind one day and 77,000 returns were shredded. Of the PR disaster that nobody could have anticipated, Marty said, “It was one of the worst things I’ve ever been involved with in my life…The joke I used to tell was that the factory of the future would have one person and a dog. The dog would be there to make sure nobody touched the equipment, and the man would be there to feed the dog.”

Also in 2001, Marty sold Mellon’s retail banking business to Citizens Bank. It was a bold move, and while it was ahead of its time, it suffered in the short term because of a national economic cycle that temporarily made retail banking more valuable than the higher growth businesses into which Mellon was moving.

Part of the reason Marty wanted to do the autobiography project was to give his side of the story on the sale of Mellon to Bank of New York. People often asked him, even on the street: “Why’d you sell Mellon?” He didn’t sell Mellon.

In early January 2006, he was forced out at Mellon, and the board hired Bob Kelly who sold the bank by the end of that year. An excerpted chapter from the autobiography, “The Selling of Mellon – How Pittsburgh Lost a Fabled Institution” appeared in Pittsburgh Quarterly and tells his side of the story. Marty felt that Cahouet and a cabal of board members were behind his ouster and that the decision to sell Mellon was rash and bad for Pittsburgh. He felt betrayed by the board, many of whom were leading Pittsburghers.

Looking back on Marty’s life, his personal and business achievements were many and broad. Beyond Mellon, he was a past board member of five public companies: General Reinsurance, Chubb, Igate, Celanese and Mastercard USA.

Beyond those achievements was his warm and welcoming personality. He treated people from all walks of life with dignity and respect.

The most lasting impression I have of Marty, however, is his tremendous legacy of public service.

What he did nationally is noteworthy. He was a past Chairman of The Financial Services Roundtable and President of the Federal Reserve Advisory Board. He was also a major benefactor of Villanova University and the U.S. Marine Corps Scholarship Fund.

But what he did for Pittsburgh matches or exceeds anyone I know. He chaired the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. He was a multi-decade board member and benefactor of the Heinz History Center, the Carnegie Museums (past chair of the Museum of Art), UPMC, and the Pittsburgh Promise, where he was the longtime vice chairman (Franco Harris was the chairman). He co-chaired a capital campaign for the Children’s Institute and was very involved in the Pittsburgh Public Schools and the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative. He was also a donor to the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, among others.

He was a truly outstanding American who came of age during the Golden 1950s, served his country in the Vietnam war, became a leading national CEO, and one of Pittsburgh’s most involved and dedicated corporate leaders and philanthropists.

What more can be said? The best wine I ever had was a bottle Marty opened. He was both demanding and giving — a friend and an advisor, and the kind of person who gave his best efforts at whatever he did.

And the results of those efforts are woven into many different strands of the complex fabric that has made Pittsburgh the city it is.