Mills Lane's Wonderful World

In a profession that prides itself on impeccable dignity, Atlanta Banker Mills B. Lane Jr., 56, often seems downright outlandish. To help promote Georgia's fledgling woolen industry, he once brought in a herd of sheep to graze in his bank's main lobby. Emphasizing the virtues of teamwork, he has arrived at official meetings decked out in baseball and football uniforms. At one meeting, anxious to rev up competition among his bank's various branches, he showed up at the wheel of a child's toy car. And to make the point that the bank's executives ought to aim at bigger and bigger targets, he once donned a shooting jacket and bounded into a conference room amid a volley of blank .30-cal. cartridges.

Lane's fellow bankers may frown on such flamboyance, but they can only marvel at his accomplishments. In 21 years as president of Georgia's Citizens & Southern National Bank, he has certified himself not only as a leading innovator in U.S. banking, but also as Atlanta's most colorful civic leader. Under his command, Citizens & Southern has grown into the biggest bank (assets: $1.3 billion) in the Deep South, and Lane restlessly continues to expand its operations both inside Georgia and out. This week, for example, he plans to fly to the Caribbean for the formal opening of the new Jamaica Citizens Bank, 49% owned by Citizens & Southern.

Loafers & Loud Coats. Stocky (5 ft. 9 in., 170 lbs.) and balding, Lane wears a puckish smile fixed below his wire-rimmed spectacles. Instead of banker's grey, he prefers loafers and loud sport coats; he has made a trademark out of ties, in a variety of colors, bearing the inscription: "It's a wonderful world."

For all his eccentricities, Lane is a third-generation banker whose father was Citizens & Southern's longtime president. Lane himself joined the bank as a clerk after his graduation from Yale in 1934, soon found that the Depression had left Atlanta's banking community "old and tired." Churning with fresh ideas, he rose quickly through the ranks, becoming a first vice president in 1939. When Lane, still only 34, moved up to president in 1946 (his father had died the year before), he took over a bank that was lagging far behind Atlanta's First National, the city's largest.

Since then, C & S has grown to be almost twice the size of First National, as Lane increased its branches from 13 to 61 while steadily expanding its services. C & S was a pioneer in converting to data processing and introducing freight-bill payment services, under which the bank pays the shipping bills of its customers directly out of their accounts. C & S also moved headlong into travel services, now ranks as one of the South's largest travel agencies. One of the first major banks to issue its own credit card, C & S was first to offer the "instant money" privilege that entitles holders to borrow against their cards. After all, reasoned Lane, if the bank's card was good for charging $25 in merchandise at a store, "why couldn't it be used for charging $25 of what we're selling--money?"

Candid Admissions. Lane has taken a daringly liberal approach to selling his bank's money--particularly when it comes to extending cash to small businesses. Significantly, C&S empowers its loan-department trainees to approve loans on their own, but requires that they get approval from a senior officer when they turn one down. Such aggressiveness has paid off with a 14.6% return on invested capital, the second highest of any major U.S. bank.

In running C&S with what he likes to call "the spirit of the Yankee trader," Lane has forced rival Atlanta banks to become more aggressive too. While that impact alone has helped spur the city's commerce, Lane's civic contributions have been far more direct. For example, when Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen approached him for $650,000 in seed money for the new Atlanta stadium a few years ago, Lane had his bank put up the loan--even though the city had not yet won its team franchises for either major-league football or baseball. Said Lane with a flourish: "The character of the city of Atlanta is good collateral in this bank any day."

Lane seems to have as much faith in his own shareholders and employees. His bank's annual reports, which he insists on writing himself, are models of full accounting, bearing such candid admissions as the fact that "we lost a major national account to the alertness of a competitor." As for his employees, Lane for several years held his own salary to $25,000 (it now stands at $130,000) until he could implement lower-level pay and bonus increases that he felt were necessary. Among employees and outsiders alike, he is best known for his cheery greeting: "It's a wonderful world." Once a bank aide asked him whether the world was really all that wonderful. "Of course," chuckled Lane, "that's company policy."

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