Bank of America jilts its hometown of San Francisco for ... Charlotte, N.C.?

Old San Francisco, long gaseous with self-regard (self-esteem is for Oakland), suffered a grievous deflating April 13 when Bank of America--banker to entrepreneurs and immigrants; builder of new industries; capitalizer of the California Dream; financier, indeed, gallant financier of the Golden Gate Bridge--announced its merger with NationsBank to form BankAmerica and its plans to move bank headquarters from San Francisco to Charlotte, N.C.

There is a loss of face in the move of the bank's home office, as well as a blow to San Francisco's economy. To many San Franciscans, the rejection of the city is regarded as an insult to BofA founder A.P. Giannini. Old-timers recall that Giannini, who kept his desk on the banking floor itself, made loans to working people after inspecting their hands: If the loan applicant had callused hands that meant he was working, and he got the loan.

In the 49 years since Giannini's death, the 94-year-old BofA has discarded much of the old way, but even today the bank supports urbanity high and low. Last year it donated nearly $5 million to greater San Francisco, including $178,000 to the San Francisco Opera. Its San Francisco branches cash-at-par public benefits checks without requiring recipients to have bank accounts there.

While there was no run on the bank in the wake of the news, so great was the shock that the bank made grief counselors available to the stricken city. Hugh McColl, No. 1 at NationsBank and chairman of the combined operation, sought to reassure the city, koaning at a San Francisco meeting, "The headquarters is where we are. Now we're in San Francisco. This afternoon we'll be in Los Angeles."

Charlotte was bad enough, but by suggesting that the HQ is now also in much despised L.A., where San Franciscans say the definition of Old Money is someone whose checks clear the bank the first time, was a very bitter pill.

San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown spoke for the city when he said, "They're stealing our bank!" And while it may not be an actual defalcation, it certainly is an abscondment. The deal talks, worked out in only three weeks in the city's appropriately named Mandarin Hotel, were carried out in utter secrecy. "Bank of America is an important institution in our city--it has been so throughout the city's history," Brown said. "It'll be a shock to our economy, an economic crisis."

The most wired man in a wired city, the mayor first learned of the merger at 5 a.m. April 13, when a San Francisco Examiner reporter called to tell him the deal was being announced then in Manhattan.

To old San Franciscans, people whose hands have shaken the hands of those who came in the Gold Rush, the move is an act of lèse-majesté, an impertinence rivaling only that of Billy Ralston, who chose to go for a refreshing swim in the harbor one day in 1875 when his mighty Bank of California was crashing, rather than stay at the office. Ralston drowned. Of course, in financial circles, McColl, who constructed the deal, is believed to be able to walk on water.

The deal is colossal. The new institution, which might as well have been named TitanicBank, will be the United States' largest, with $570 billion in assets. It will:

be the No. 1 bank in loans, deposits, business lending (large and small), and ATMs (15,000);