Hugh McColl
| Hugh McColl | |
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Hugh McColl speaking publicly in 2009
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| Born |
Hugh Leon McColl, Jr. June 18, 1935 Bennettsville, South Carolina |
| Residence | Charlotte, North Carolina, USA |
| Known for | Former Chairman, CEO Bank of America |
| Spouse(s) | Jane Bratton Spratt McColl |
| Website | McColl Partners |
Hugh L. McColl Jr. (born 18 June 1935) is a fourth-generation banker and the former Chairman and CEO of Bank of America. Active in banking since around 1960, McColl was a driving force behind consolidating a series of progressively larger, mostly Southern banks, thrifts and financial institutions into a super-regional banking force, "the first ocean-to-ocean bank in the nation's history." Tony Plath, director of banking studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, described this transformation in 2005 as "the most significant banking story of the late 20th century." In 2012, polemicist Matt Taibbi described the transition as "a cartoonish arms race of bank acquisitions that would ultimately turn the American business world upside down." As a young man, McColl along with a colleague had envisioned creating the first truly national bank with branches from coast to coast.
McColl was born in Bennettsville, South Carolina, to Hugh Leon McColl (1905–1994), a cotton farmer and banker and Frances Pratt Carroll McColl (1906–1987), an artist. He had a sister and two brothers. Their paternal great-grandfather, Duncan Donald McColl (1842–1911) was an attorney who had developed the first railroad (the 50-mile (80 km) South Carolina Pacific Railway) and the first cotton mills in Marlboro County. He also founded the Bank of Marlboro, later headed by his son Hugh L. McColl, (1874–1931), followed by his grandson Hugh Leon McColl. McColl's father liquidated the Bank of Marlboro in 1939 during the Great Depression. He later bought a controlling interest in Marlboro Trust Co. As a youth, Hugh McColl went to work part-time at age 14 for the trust company and his father’s cotton company, McColl Cotton Mills. He learned to keep books, securing payments, learning double-entry accounting and driving across North and South Carolina to make deposits.
McColl was elected student council president at Bennettsville High School, and class president in his senior year (1953). He was voted Best All-Round Boy in his senior class. His yearbook quotation read: "He who is talented in leadership holds the world's dream in his grip." After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, McColl joined the United States Marine Corps and served a two-year tour of duty. Honorably discharged, he returned to North Carolina. According to McColl, his father pushed him into banking, saying that he "didn't have the brains for farming." McColl married after college. He declined an offer from his father-in-law, John McKee Spratt (1907–1973), a banker, attorney, and judge, to work at the Bank of Fort Mill, a small family-owned bank. McColl accepted his father's arranging an introduction to officers at another bank. Young McColl went to work as a management trainee for American Commercial Bank in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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