Ex-NationsBank Chairman Dies; Key Figure in Mergers That Built

Bennett A. Brown, the Atlanta banker who revived Citizens & Southern Corp. and negotiated its merger into NationsBank Corp., died last Saturday after a long battle with lung cancer. He was 68.

A native of Kingstree, S.C., Mr. Brown lived in Atlanta and Pawley's Island, S.C., after retiring as NationsBank chairman in 1992.

After brief stints at Chemical Bank in New York and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Mr. Brown started at Citizens & Southern National Bank as a management trainee in 1955 and rose through the ranks quickly under the wing of chairman Mills B. Lane.

He became chief executive officer of the holding company, C&S Corp., in 1978, when the bank was under tight regulatory scrutiny and nearly collapsed because of bad real estate loans.

By the early 1980s, a recovered C&S was able to take advantage of regional interstate banking by expanding into Florida and South Carolina.

Its 1990 merger with Sovran Financial Corp. of Virginia, creating C&S/Sovran Corp., was the biggest banking merger to that point. NCNB Corp.'s combination with that company at yearend 1991-three years after Mr. Brown had rebuffed an offer by NCNB chairman Hugh McColl-created NationsBank, then with $119 billion of assets, half its current size.

Mr. Brown "was a man of action who understood how a strong, healthy bank could shape and build a community," said Mr. McColl, who shared power with him for NationsBank's first year. "He was a shrewd leader, a tough competitor, and a good friend."

NationsBank said tributes came in from former Georgia Gov. Carl Sanders, who said Mr. Brown battled tenaciously for interstate banking legislation; and Georgia bank commissioner Jack Dunn, who said, "What he did for C&S was miraculous."

Robert Forrestal, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said Mr. Brown was "just a natural individual ... very practical, and very farsighted." Mr. Forrestal was a neighbor of Mr. Brown's.

Mr. Brown, who was diagnosed with lung cancer last year, recently donated $100,000 to cancer research at Emory Medical Center.

He is survived by his wife, Mary Alice, and four children and six grandchildren.

A funeral service was held Monday at Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, and another is scheduled today at Williamsburg Presbyterian Church in Kingstree, S.C.

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