Lucille Ingalls remembers going to work as a teller at an affiliate of Mercantile Bankshares Corp. in Virginia during World War II. She stayed even after the soldiers returned from abroad, rising to the post of senior vice president and watching the banking industry evolve through the dawning of the automated teller machine.
J. Donald Henyon, head of Mercantile's affiliate in Laurel for more than a decade, remembers life as a community pillar, firing up the popcorn machine for customers on Saturdays and making it a point to never be seen gambling at the nearby horse tracks. He is, after all, a banker. He doesn't like to lose money.
The stories of Ingalls and Henyon - normally not considered ones for the history books - are being captured by historians as Mercantile's name is disappearing, not only from bank statements but from Baltimore's skyline and from 240 branches. It will be replaced by PNC Financial Services Group, a Pittsburgh-based bank that acquired Mercantile in its expansion southward and that launched a "legacy project" to preserve its history.
PNC is trying to ingratiate itself with the customers and employees in Mercantile's Mid-Atlantic footprint, and has spent nearly a year working on a smooth integration of the two institutions. The process culminates tomorrow when Mercantile's operational systems will be converted to PNC's platform and the blue-and-orange PNC logos will be unveiled on the branches.
While Pittsburgh executives are taking pains to acknowledge Mercantile's past, which stretches back more than 140 years to the Civil War, they are also promoting what they believe are PNC's far superior technology and services.
PNC's highly orchestrated opening has two aims: show potential customers that there's a new player in town and retain Mercantile customers being wooed by local competitors trying to capitalize on the fact that PNC is run by out-of-towners.
To prepare for the Mercantile conversion, PNC has mailed new checks, debit cards and explanatory materials to more than 500,000 account holders, though Mercantile cards will work until October and checks will be accepted indefinitely. Account numbers will change, but direct deposits and automatic transfers will continue. PNC's online banking system will be available to Mercantile customers starting Monday.
Extensive training
