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Citibank's Superman Juggles Latin-American Loans

After Mexico stunned the international financial world last August by announcing it was unable to pay its $80 billion of foreign debt on time, Citibank senior officer William R. Rhodes emerged as the most important banker in the massive effort to renegotiate Mexico's huge outstanding loans.In short order last winter, as one after another nation found itself over its head in debt, Bill Rhodes, at age 48, became the most important foreign banker in Latin America.

The Bank of New England Corp. promoted its chief financial officer to vice chairman yesterday in a move which signals a change in bank precedent. The bank, one of the largest commercial banks in the region named J. Nicholas Rees, 49, to the position of vice chairman and director of the Boston bank holding company. He becomes the second vice chairman at the bank, along with Wilson Brunel, 63.

Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker warned Congress yesterday that failure to solve the mounting debt problems of developing countries would stall a U.S. economic recovery and threaten "the cohesion and political relationships of the Western world."

IN THEIR lending to Latin America, the American commercial banks have not demonstrated any great degree of either caution or foresight. First they lent far more than they intended. Now they are insisting on extremely high interest rates on those loans.The present level of interest is highly profitable for the banks as long as it is paid.

When you're tallying up the campaign questions that we'll be asked during the next 12 months, put this one at the top of the list: "Do you feel safer than you did four years ago?"In 1980, Ronald Reagan asked us whether our bank accounts looked better. In 1984, the man running against Reagan is surely going to ask us whether our world looks better.

When you're tallying up the campaign questions that we'll be asked during the next 12 months, put this one at the top of the list: "Do you feel safer than you did four years ago?" In l980, Reagan asked us whether our bank accounts looked better. In l984, the man running against Reagan is surely going to ask us whether our world looks better.

Charter National Bank's current newspaper advertisement doesn't name failed Penn Square Bank as the previous occupant of Charter's premises.But the implication is deafening.Superimposed on a likeness of a brick wall, the ad reads: ""New ownership, new board of directors, new officers, new staff, new customers . . . The only thing that's the same is the brick.''

A tax on electronic arcade games could help finance improvements in mathematics and science education, a Senate panel was told yesterday.Such a tax could provide several hundred million dollars a year "and would not be onerous when one considers where all those quarters come from," said F. James Rutherford, chief education officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The failure of the United American Bank of Knoxville was "an aberration" that resulted from "incredibly bad-loan policies," Sen. Jake Garn (R., Utah), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, told a group of accountants and bankers.In an address to the Dade County chapter of the Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants and several local banking groups in Miami Tuesday night, Garn proposed that bank regulators target their resources.

U.S. manufacturers enjoyed a second straight month of brisk orders for big-ticket durable goods last month, recording a 4.5 percent gain after December's increase of 8.5 percent, the government reported yesterday.After recent reports that industrial production and retail sales rose in January, the new Commerce Department figures seemed yet another sign that the national economy was moving into recovery after 1 1/2 years of recession.

Smaller regional U.S. banks and some foreign banks are making it extremely difficult to assemble a financial rescue package for Brazil, whose foreign debts are approaching $90 billion, sources said yesterday.Major banks, scrambling to arrange a loan package with the financially strapped nation, are being forced to put up about $1.3 billion a day to make up a shortfall of loans from smaller banks, the sources said.

From a speech last week by Martin Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, on international debt policy: Although my remarks . . . have emphasized the contribution that the governments of the industrial nations can make, I want to leave no doubt about my belief that the major responsibility lies with the debtor nations and with the commercial banks.

A House Banking subcommittee, angry that President Reagan did not retract a GOP letter criticizing some House Democrats, voted yesterday to oppose Export-Import Bank plans to extend $2 billion worth of loan guarantees to Brazil and Mexico.The setback comes as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are holding their annual meetings in Washington.

It's been over two years since the economic whirlwind of the 1970s came to an abrupt halt throughout Latin America, leaving behind a trail of half-built dams and railroads, fast-rising unemployment and a whopping $300 billion in outstanding public and private debt to foreign lenders. Today, there is little disagreement among American bankers, economists and other observers over what caused the crisis.

Rebels seeking to overthrow Mozambique's Marxist government have introduced a new element of cold war politics into the conflict with their bold killing of two Soviet mining technicians and kidnaping of two dozen others this week.The Soviet Embassy in Maputo confirmed today that the South African-backed Mozambique National Resistance movement overcame government militia forces in a dawn raid Sunday on the Morrua mine in Mozambique's populous Zambezia Province.

The collapse of Venezuela's largest bank has exposed a history of political mismanagement and corruption here that has tainted the two dominant political parties and turned this year's presidential election into an ugly debate over the abuse of money and power.

A Lexington bank once controlled by bankrupt financier Jake Butcher sued him yesterday, accusing him of fraud and seeking damages of at least $10 million.Citizens Union National Bank & Trust Co. filed the suit, called an ''adversarial proceeding," in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. It wants Butcher to make good on his debts."

Latin American debt began to take its toll on the nation's major banks in the third quarter.But the fear among bankers and regulators is that what so far has been a manageable rise in Latin American problem loans will become a terrifying explosion.The economic recovery in the United States has helped banks overall, analysts said.

Fidelity Bank has declared the two top officers of Omni Exploration Inc. of Radnor, Delaware County, in default on personal loans and has taken control of their 27 percent interest in the oil and natural-gas drilling company, it was announced yesterday.In moving against D. Bruce Trainor, 40, Omni's chairman and chief executive officer, and Thomas F. Gill Jr., 38, president, the bank also demanded the proxies to vote their shares at the company's annual meeting.

Finance ministers from nations rich and poor entered final talks Thursday over how much new credit debtor countries must have to stem the worst global economic slump since World War II.Developing countries pressed for a 100 per cent increase in an emergency lending pool maintained by the International Monetary Fund. The United States, however, has been urging the major industrial nations, which have effective control over the IMF, to hold the increase to 40 to 50 per cent.

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