Postal Chief Frank Resigns After 4 Years

Postmaster General Anthony M. Frank, who directed a sweeping automated mail-handling program at the U.S. Postal Service and sharply reduced the work force, resigned Tuesday after four years in the job.

Frank, who ran First Nationwide, a major California savings institution, before moving to Washington, will return to San Francisco as chairman of Acrogen Inc., a small firm developing a diagnostic test for cancer and other diseases.

He had made no secret of his eagerness to return to the financial services industry but the demands of the Postal Service--an enterprise with $45 billion in revenues and a work force of 750,000--made it impossible for him to make an easy transition to a major post in the financial services business. “You just can’t plan your career when you’re in this job,” he said after a news conference.

“I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I grow up,” said Frank, known to be quick with a quip or a joke. “But I am very interested in financial institutions . . . and I have kept my hand in here in Washington.”

He has testified before Congress about the complexities of the savings-and-loan cleanup and was rumored at one time to be a candidate for chief of the Resolution Trust Corp., the agency in charge of defunct S&Ls.;

Frank said his work as chairman of Acrogen, a privately held firm with 12 employees, will take just 20% of his time. The implication was that he would then be available if a call came from a company or group of investors looking for an experienced banker.

Frank and a group of investors founded Acrogen in 1987. They also had been successful partners in bankrolling a previous venture, Agrion, a producer of animal vaccines, which was sold at a large profit to the Bayer Co.

Frank said that his resignation will take effect Feb. 28, exactly four years after he began work as the nation’s 69th postal chief. He has served longer than any other postmaster appointed from outside the Postal Service since the system became an independent agency in 1971. A search is under way for a successor.

Under Frank’s leadership, the Postal Service began its most ambitious automation program--71% of all mail now is handled by special equipment that scans, reads and sorts addresses, compared with 26% just four years ago. The number of jobs has been trimmed by 42,000 since May, 1989, and will shrink a further 45,000 by 1995.

The system will save $4 billion a year through automation, Frank said. “I don’t know which pleases me more--that we are achieving these savings for the American people and the businesses we serve or that we have been able to do so without layoffs, without disrupting the job security which is so important to our career work force,” he said.

One of Frank’s major disappointments came at the hands of the independent Postal Rate Commission, which rejected his request for a 30-cent rate for first class mail, and instead adopted a 29-cent charge, a decision that cost $850 million a year in revenues.

Frank said that the Postal Service needs more flexibility in the rate-making process.