In Brief: Ex-Continental Illinois Chairman Dead

William Sterling Ogden, the retired chairman of Continental Illinois Bank and Trust Co. who was responsible for its turnaround in the 1980s, died Saturday of cardiac arrest near his Stamford, Conn., home. He was 69.

His son, William Jr., said Mr. Ogden died immediately after taking a motorcycle lesson near his home.

Mr. Ogden joined Chase Manhattan Bank in 1945 after serving in World War II as a Marine Corps sergeant in the Pacific. He rose through the executive ranks until 1980 when he became vice chairman, chief financial officer, and director.

After Mr. Ogden retired in 1984, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. recruited him to take charge of Continental Illinois, a bank involved in millions of dollars of bad loans from Oklahoma and Texas oil companies. For the next three years, he was Continental's chairman and chief executive officer, responsible for the bank's turnaround.

He had also been one of the founders of the Institution of International Finance in Washington, serving as its first nonexecutive chairman from 1984 to 1986. In 1992, Mr. Ogden founded Inter-Atlantic Capital Partners, a boutique investment bank, of which he had been chairman.

Mr. Ogden is survived by his wife, Marian, two children, and five grandchildren.

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