CHAPTER FIVE
FOR THE better part of three generations, Global United Bank of Chicago’s predecessor institution had been the quintessential Chicago neighborhood community bank, with all of its operations limited to a headquarters and two branches located on the city’s near northwest side. In 1924, Harold Flannery, Sr., an industrialist, and grandfather of one of Global United’s current shareholders, Harold Flannery III, was quite exercised at having recently been turned down by another local bank for a loan to expand his manufacturing business. Vowing that would never happen again, he decided to establish a new bank that would be slightly more entrepreneurial in nature, and a little more sensitive to the needs of its customers. Flannery gathered together eight other northwest side communit
