John Rau, led two venerable Chicago financial institutions, dies at 76

Chicago Tribune

09-05-2025

John Rau led two venerable Chicago financial institutions, Exchange National Bank and Chicago Title & Trust, before overseeing each firm's sale, and also was the dean of Indiana University's business school and CEO of Chicago-based Miami Corporation Management.
'He took great pride in helping institutions — but really, the people in those organizations — reach their full potential,' said Robert Venable, who succeeded Rau as CEO of Miami Corporation Management. 'He understood how important that was to the continuity of the organizations he'd been involved with.'
Rau, 76, died of a heart attack April 8 at a hotel in Bloomington, Indiana, while visiting Indiana University's business school as an executive in residence, said his stepson, Will Johnson. Rau had homes in Lake Forest, Chenequa, Wisconsin and Naples, Florida.
Born and raised in Milwaukee, Rau attended Marquette University High School and received a bachelor's degree in math and economics from Boston College in 1970. He picked up an MBA from Harvard University in 1972.
Rau began his career with the First National Bank of Chicago, where he developed an expertise in computer applications in banking and rose to become a vice president and general manager of trade finance and international banking. In 1979, he was hired to be the executive vice president and chief administrative officer at Chicago's Exchange National Bank, which was a second-tier bank among Chicago's financial institutions. Exchange National doubled in size in 1982 with the acquisition of Central National Bank.
In 1981, Norman Bobins joined Exchange National after 15 years with American National Bank and Trust. Beginning in 1983, Rau and Bobins shared the No. 2 role at Exchange National Bank, with Rau serving as the bank's president and chief operating officer and Bobins as president of the bank's holding company. Both worked for the bank's chairman and CEO, Ira J. Kaufman.
'We were very complementary in our skills and it was a lot of fun,' Bobins said.
Over the 10 years that Rau helped run Exchange, assets grew almost tenfold.
In 1989, Rau and Bobins led the surprise $420 million sale of Exchange National to Dutch-owned LaSalle National Bank of Chicago. Rau stayed on as president and CEO of the combined $6 billion bank, which took on the name LaSalle National Bank.
Upon the deal's announcement, Rau, then 41, reflected to the Tribune that he was 'not much of a career planner,' and conceded that early on, he had 'looked on banking as a boring profession where you couldn't make any money and had to be 50 before you could achieve anything.'
Rau left LaSalle in 1991 for an academic post at Northwestern University's Center for Banking Research, where he was advisory committee chairman. He also was chairman of the Illinois Economic Development Commission and was an adviser to then-Gov. Jim Edgar.
In 1993, Rau was named the dean of the Indiana University School of Business — now known as the Kelley School of Business.
'It was a case of serendipity,' he told the Tribune in 1993. 'I had been thinking, after two years of taking it easy, about trying to run something again. I thought it would be interesting to run a school of business.'
During his time at Indiana, Rau launched a major capital-raising campaign and received approval from the state Higher Education Commission to fund the construction of a new graduate and corporate facility.
Rau was 'a real-world corporate outsider, (and) many faculty bristled at his pragmatic and nontraditional approach to business education,' Kelley School of Business Dean Patrick Hopkins said. 'However, with the benefit of hindsight, even my most-reluctant colleagues can recognize and appreciate his profound influence on Kelley today.'
Rau left Indiana in 1996 to become CEO and president of Chicago Title and Trust Co. What appealed to Rau about joining Chicago Title — then a 150-year-old business and the city's guardian of property records — was managing the Chicago-based firm through the kinds of changes in the real estate title insurance industry that were similar to those that previously had altered the banking industry.
'Customers are getting bigger and more national and demanding more sophisticated services and full-service national penetration,' he told the Tribune in 1996. 'The big companies are increasingly wanting one-stop shopping, not just for the title, but for all the pieces needed to close the transaction fast. Real estate has become a big part of the financial market now that it's more liquid and national, and it's a big challenge to figure out what that means for Chicago Title.'
In 1997, Rau predicted that technology would change work radically and help make the idea of workplace location meaningless. The Tribune reported that Rau had written that he anticipated that future title company customers — the teenagers of the 1990s — one day would be so used to the internet and other electronic transactions that they 'won't want to pay for huge buildings, offices, plants, warehouses, branch offices, substations, corporate headquarters and stores.'
In 1997, Chicago Title announced that it would be spun off as a stand-alone public company from New York-based Alleghany Corp.
'What we need to do strategically is to get everybody feeling and thinking like owners, and more focused on thinking about the company as a whole,' Rau told the Tribune in 1997.
In 1999, Rau oversaw the sale of Chicago Title to Fidelity National Financial. He had quadrupled the firm's value in less than three years.
'For me, there are mixed feelings. I liked this; we had a team here,' Rau told the Tribune in 1999. 'But sometimes your goal is to block, and you don't get to cross the goal line, but they don't get there without you throwing the block.'
Rau left Chicago Title after the company was sold, but he took on the role of chairman of the Chicago Title and Trust Co. Foundation. In 2001, Rau became chairman of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce.
In 2002, Rau was hired as CEO of the Miami Corp. — now Miami Corporation Management — which is a single-family office that manages the affairs of industrialist and philanthropist William Deering's descendants. Rau retired from that role in 2023.
'Strategically, John was really exceptional,' Venable said. 'The combination of developing the team but also having a really keen strategic insight in being able to focus on the big picture and the organization well was something he excelled at.'
Rau published a business book, 'Secrets from the Search Firm Files: What It Really Takes to Get Ahead in the Corporate Jungle,' in 1997. Rau also served on various corporate boards, including Southern Co., BMO Financial and First Industrial Realty Trust.
In addition to his stepson, Rau is survived by his wife, Colette Evans Rau; a son, Michael; two daughters, Caroline Kingsley and Rebecca Rau; a stepdaughter, Olivia Johnson; three sisters, Mary, Nancy Rau Heckman and Catherine; two brothers, Jerry and Jamie; and six grandchildren.
Services were held.