Veteran Banking Technologist George DiNardo Dead At 67

George DiNardo, a pioneering business technologist and former CIO at Mellon Bank, died May 5 from complications resulting from respiratory failure. He was 67.

In 1988, InformationWeek named DiNardo its CIO chief of the year.

Most recently, DiNardo served as chief technology officer of Citibank's Asia Pacific Consumer Bank, where he oversaw the standardization of consumer bank processing and products across the diverse cultures of the world's fastest-growing business region from Turkey to South Korea to Australia. He retired from that post in 2001. "We don't want 15 countries developing 15 versions of the same product," he told InformationWeek in 1995. "The priority is delivering our products to market in half the time. The fact that we're going to save a fortune is secondary."

From 1969 to 1991, DiNardo worked at Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh, rising to executive VP for information management and research in 1985.

Under DiNardo's leadership, Mellon became one of the leading financial institutions to implement retail electronic banking, automated teller machine, and corporate cash-management services. Mellon also was among the first banking companies to provide data-processing services for other financial institutions.

DiNardo also oversaw the integration of IT systems as the result of one of the larger bank mergers of the early 1980s, when Mellon acquired Girard Bank of Philadelphia.

"During his tenure at Mellon Bank, George was one of the world's most influential information technology executives in the financial-services industry," said Otto Chu, chairman of Chu Financial Management Corp., in a statement. Chu served as DiNardo's attorney at Mellon. "He was one of the key executives who led the banking industry in developing many of the electronic banking services that we take for granted today."

DiNardo also worked as a consultant and professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and Duquesne University. DiNardo said he loved teaching, especially those he called "the hungry students in night school." But his passion was the business world, where he also briefly served as director of information management and research at the accounting and business consulting firm Coopers & Lybrand.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette DiNardo had thought of making a career in the U.S. Navy after having served more than three years, including duty on the USS Saufley during the 1962 naval blockade of Cuba.

DiNardo used to tell his five sons that once while serving as the officer of the deck during the blockade, he almost ran the ship aground in Cuba. He remained in the Navy Reserve after his active duty, and retired as a lieutenant commander.

DiNardo and his wife, Jeanne, lived in Skidaway Island, Ga., at the time of his death. He also is survived by five sons: George, Peter, and David of Pittsburgh; Steven of Philadelphia; and Michael of San Diego.