IF YOU WILL IT IS NO DREAM - IV

 

The Trust Company became one of the largest banks in the State of New Jersey the old-fashioned way, through internal growth: one customer at a time, one branch at a time. Siggi poured himself into building a loyal following by showing up, shaking hands, handing out gifts, listening to customers’ problems, and offering remedies.

The FED, however, were not impressed by these small gestures, and would not allow Siggi to keep his companies together. He would have to use his prodigious brain to figure out what to do. The idea he conceived would be the most outrageous than any he had come up with before.

In 1975 Siggi became the first person to sue the Federal Reserve.

The FED’s formidable president, Paul Volcker, was six foot seven, the son of German immigrants. Memories of the Great Depression loomed over the pairing of commercial companies and banking, and Wilshire’s ownership of 
TCNJ embodied everything “Big Paul” vowed to crush. Siggi’s response to the threat was that he was ready to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court.

Called “the country’s leading banking lawyer”, Rodgin Cohen agreed to become Siggi’s chief legal expert in his battle with the FED. At five feet six, Cohen was just slightly taller than Siggi. He was also the smartest man that Siggi had ever met. “He only weighs a hundred pounds” Siggi commented, “but ninety of them are brains.”

In spite of legitimate counter claims made by Rodgin Cohen, a war with the FED was inevitable. In Siggi’s opinion, the real cause was not President Nixon’s mission to break the back of inflation, but anti-semitism. He believed that the FED’s aim was to stop him, a Jew, from taking over a commercial bank. He was not the first Jew to attempt this, and who wasn’t enabled to succeed.

He was now obliged, either to comply with the FED’s order to divest, or face the consequences. He was given a deadline by December 31, 1980, and was warned that, if he didn’t divest of either the bank or the oil company, the FED would do it for him.

After Siggi’s team had put together the winning hand, the Federal Reserve descended and stopped the game cold. The ruling to divest was irreversible and the spin-off of TCNJ from Wilshire’s took place in 1982. In the end, as pointed out in the Forbes financial publication in 1983: “The Battles Lost, the War won.”

                                                                            

It was always Siggi’s goal for one of his three children to take over the business. Out of Siggi’s three children, his oldest son refused categorically and his youngest son’s talents were headed  in a completely different direction.   That left his middle child, his 23 year-old married daughter Sherry, who was the one most like Siggi. With her at the helm, Siggi found a way to maintain control over the affairs of Wilshire and at the same time, retaining de factor control of his two companies.