John Morton III has turned around failing thrifts, controlled billions of dollars in assets and weighed in on some of the banking industry's biggest mergers.
Now he's directing his trademark aggressiveness and energy toward a new challenge: helping to bring the Summer Olympic Games to the region in 2012.
"I have a passion for seeing us win this," he said. "Once it's established in my mind, everything becomes focused on getting there. The benchmark to every decision has to be: Will this further our effort toward winning the bid?"
Morton, 54, the athletic new president of NationsBank Corp.'s Mid-Atlantic Banking Group, recently was named volunteer chairman of the Washington-Baltimore Regional 2012 Coalition, which is leading the effort to bring the Games to the area.
By September, the group hopes to have a paid chief executive officer who will report to Morton, the head of the board of directors.
Those who know him say Morton is an excellent choice for the job -- driven, a top-notch salesman with outstanding analytical skills and the ability to focus on a goal and achieve it.
Morton exudes self-confidence and has spent years on the fast track, jumping from one high-powered job to the next. He is low-key, not flamboyant, a quick study who doesn't shy from making unpopular decisions. He is tightly wound, hard-edged and sometimes flexes his muscle in meetings to make it clear to everyone that he has the final word.
"He's one of the most self-confident people I've worked with," said Dick Macgill, a retired senior vice president of Maryland National, who was Morton's first supervisor at the bank. "That self-confidence is warranted, based on his intellect and performance."
Morton left a job in St. Louis and returned to Maryland in February, having spent 17 years with Maryland National Bank, which was acquired by NationsBank Corp. in 1994. Morton inherited a role in the Olympics effort from his predecessor, R. Eugene Taylor, who left to head the bank's Florida operations.
The Baltimore-Washington region is competing against San Francisco, Cincinnati, Houston, New York, Seattle, Tampa-Orlando, Fla., Los Angeles and Arlington, Texas, between Dallas and Fort Worth, to be the U.S. Olympic Committee's entry for the 2012 Summer Games.
As the coalition's board chairman, Morton will try to keep about two dozen people focused on compiling a winning bid, helping sell the region and drum up financial support.
NationsBank was a sponsor of the Atlanta Games in 1996, and some bank officers' business cards bear the five Olympic rings in the lower left corner.
The bank raised more than $700,000 for Atlanta athletes, played a role in more than 100 pre- and post-Olympic events, and involved more than 1,000 bank employees in the Games, Morton said.
"To me, the Olympics just captures the attention and emotions ** of the world" and gives the host cities "a forever legacy."
He ticks off the rewards of a successful bid: a boost to the pride of the residents, increased visibility to the world, buildings and infrastructure that will last for generations.
But win or lose this bid, the region will benefit, Morton said.
"I think one of the biggest things that we'll gain, even if we don't win, is the partnering that's going on every week, every day, with community leaders and business leaders of both the Washington region and the Baltimore region," he said.
That could translate into civic, cultural and economic development benefits for Baltimore and Washington, he said.
Morton has a split-level office in downtown Baltimore and an office on the 10th floor in Washington -- employees refer to it as the "penthouse" -- with a view of the White House.
Morton is tanned and trim. The navy blue and green stripes of his tie lend a collegiate air, making him look younger.
The banker is an ardent college basketball fan who attended the NCAA regional finals in Tampa, Fla., this year.
He flew to France for this year's soccer World Cup.
Morton says he didn't distinguish himself in lacrosse or football in college. But his friends boast for him, noting that he was a lineman at the Naval Academy in spite of his average height and weight. They say he is a good fisherman and squash player, and a golfer known to have made a hole in one.
Gaining support
Morton's offices are receiving as many as 25 calls a day from people interested in helping with the Games, financially or otherwise.
One of the converts, won over by Morton's enthusiasm and knowledge, is Ed Kiernan, general manager of WBAL radio and 98 Rock. Kiernan was not sold on trying to bring the Olympics to the Washington-Baltimore area until he started talking to Morton.
"When I first heard we were thinking of the Olympics in 2012, I said, 'Yeah, sure,' " Kiernan recalled. "You spend time with John Morton and you really believe this can happen. He's made up his mind without question that the Olympics can be here in 2012."
Morton's knowledge of the region allows him to be more persuasive than any outsider could be. He is a graduate of the Naval Academy who served as a lieutenant aboard a nuclear submarine before earning a master's degree in business from Harvard.
After about three years at Maryland National, Morton moved to the bank's international division. In the 1980s, as an executive vice president, he led its Washington suburban banking division.
In 1990 he was named chairman, chief executive officer and president of Perpetual Financial Corp. in Vienna, Va. He is credited with the turnaround and sale of that troubled thrift and of Farm & Home Financial in Kansas City, Mo., where he was CEO and president.
Before being named to his current position at NationsBank, Morton was president of its Private Client Group. Earlier, Morton was chairman, chief executive and president of Boatmen's National Bank of St. Louis, which NationsBank acquired.
'Intense, committed'
Henry S. Baker Jr., retired as senior executive vice president and director of Maryland National Bank in Baltimore, saw the potential when Morton arrived fresh from the military for his first banking job at Maryland National in the 1970s.
"He was very intense, very committed, a very hard-working, ambitious, young man," Baker said. "He has the intellect and the people skills to make his vision happen. He was impressive from the beginning."
In many ways, Morton fits the NationsBank mold.
"When you have an organization as big as NationsBank, you've got to have a certain uniformity of procedures and you look for certain qualities in your officers," Baker said. "Hugh McColl is all those things I've said about John. He looks for that type of person to work for him." He was referring to Hugh L. McColl Jr., chief executive of Charlotte, N.C.-based NationsBank.
"John does not love to do a lot of things off the cuff," said Joe Cicero, president of First Mariner Bank in Baltimore. "Everything he does is well thought through."
From the beginning of his banking career, Morton demonstrated the ability to accomplish more work in a day than most people did in a week, Macgill said.
"If you had a complex problem, John put his finger on the key issue related to that problem," Macgill said. "His ability to focus made him very productive."
Cicero, who was chief financial officer and worked with Morton for about 1 1/2 years at Perpetual Bank beginning in 1990, said Morton's ability to focus is one of his most distinctive qualities.
"The way he operates, he identifies the main issues to get resolved and doesn't get distracted by the peripheral issues that are there all the time," Cicero said. "By keeping focused on the specific issues, you don't have your resources spread out."
Morton also makes sure there are good lines of communication between the people working for him so that everyone is moving in the same direction.
"He likes to be in charge, and he's good at it," Cicero said.
Military style
The discipline learned in the military probably honed Morton's impressive ability to stay on track, Cicero said.
But Morton also had to refine some of that military training early in his banking career.
"I remember telling John, 'You've got to get these people to want to work and to make you look good,' " said Macgill, a retired senior vice president of Maryland National who was Morton's first supervisor at the bank. "There was a tendency to command people to do things. In the business world, you may command, but it can work against you."
Morton's aggressive nature didn't always endear him to people, Macgill said. If they had to compete with him, they found him a formidable foe.
"But the people who knew him best, who worked for him, admired him most," Macgill said.
Even as a younger man, Morton's ego was a powerful force.
"He was pretty doggone self-confident, and you'd expect him to be," Macgill said. "That's why we hired him. But, if he didn't have people skills, he wouldn't be where he is now."
Morton has mellowed and his management style has matured as he has recognized and modified his tendency to control.
Morton is a private man. He is reluctant to let down his guard, to reveal too much or even to allow those who know him best to talk about him.
The only glimpse of his family that he allows is from behind the glass of framed pictures in his office.
Morton and his wife, Lisa, were high school sweethearts who met at Wyoming Seminary Preparatory School in Kingston, Penn. They have two daughters, Caroline, 28 and Tiffany, 24; and a son, Tilghman, 14.
Morton is serious but has a good sense of humor, friends say.
While working in the international division of Maryland National, Morton traveled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for business. He had been warned about crime problems and was careful to take his valuables to the beach with him. But the ever-cautious banker allowed himself to be distracted briefly by an attractive woman walking by in a swimsuit -- just long enough for her partner to snatch his valuables.
"It's a natural thing to have happened, and a lot of people would have been embarrassed," Macgill said. "But it was typical of John to be straightforward. He saw the humor in the whole situation. Even when the joke's on him, he can share it."
Morton is expected to apply that same straightforward style, propelled by his characteristic confidence and zeal, to his new role as champion of the Olympics effort.
"John would not take on a job that he did not think he would be fully capable of achieving," said Macgill. "In anything he does, he expects to be successful. His record will show that he is."
Pub Date: 8/09/98