Marty McGuinn is not ready for the gold watch just yet.

Less than a week after announcing an executive search firm had been hired to look for his successor, the 63-year-old chief executive officer of Mellon Financial Corp. started a physically demanding 17-day business trip that will take him through Boston, New York, Philadelphia, California, Dijon, France, London, Brussels, Dubai and India.

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Hours before leaving for a 5:15 a.m. flight aboard Mellon's private jet, McGuinn appeared relaxed in a open-collar shirt -- even apologizing for not being dressed more formally -- but sounded nowhere near retirement. Instead, the former Marine Corps captain went on the offensive, brushing off questions about the company's independence and Wall Street speculation that the succession announcement indicates Mellon is in play.

"The company is not for sale," he said from his 47th-floor Downtown suite.

"Exclamation point."

McGuinn's contract is up in January 2008, and he intends to step down in "approximately" two years, which would give him 10 years in the CEO suite at Downtown's One Mellon Center.

The goal is to look far and wide for the right person, considering both internal and external candidates.

"We want to be as thorough as possible," he said.

Speculation about Mellon's future independence is one of many questions dogging McGuinn after a tumultuous time at the top of Pittsburgh's most storied financial institution.

McGuinn's selection as CEO was met with cheers in 1998, especially inside the company, where the affable, gentlemanly head of Mellon's retail banking operations was viewed as a welcome change from the hard-charging, demanding and gruff Frank Cahouet, who led Mellon through a bad-loan crisis and increased the company's reliance on money management over lending.

But while Cahouet ran Mellon amid a bull market, McGuinn's tenure coincided with one of the worst stock market slides since the Great Depression -- this at a time when Mellon was making investment management a cornerstone of its business.

"Would you want to run a company in a bull market or a bear market?" McGuinn said.

The chief executive has weathered criticism about Mellon's stock performance, which is well off its bull market high but is up this quarter and in line with some competitors, and about oversight of a Downtown records processing operation. Worried that they were falling behind, a handful of employees destroyed 80,000 federal tax returns and payments in 2001, leading to a criminal probe and the indictment in March of six workers.

McGuinn also has faced questions about the bet made on making human resources consulting a key business, spending $350 million buying benefits administrator Unifi Network in 2002 on top of the $470 million purchase of another benefit consulting firm in 1997 in a deal done on Cahouet's watch. The business never performed up to expectations, leading to the sale of the consulting unit this year for $445 million.

But McGuinn's most controversial and emotionally charged decision was the 2001 sale of Mellon's branch operations -- severing the company's roots in the traditional consumer banking business just as it was about to explode in profitability.

The sale fit with Mellon's long-term strategy of relying on fee-based businesses -- money management, mutual funds, trust and custody services, corporate cash management and processing.

McGuinn did not want to spend the money he felt it would take to make Mellon a national retail banking player, able to reach and serve customers all over the country. The business had lower profit margins, was concentrated in a slow-growth area and tended to follow the swings in the economy more than money management and other fee businesses Mellon was pursuing and growing.

The timing of the move, McGuinn admits, could have been better, though he notes Mellon did seek out a buyer, Rhode Island-based Citizens Financial Group, that was committed to growing the business.

"Would there have been a better time, particularly in hindsight, with one of the worst equity markets since the Depression and low interest rates, which actually hurt" banks such as Mellon that deal heavily in investments, he asked. "You know, sure, but again, when you are making strategic decisions, you are not just trying to time it in particular cycle. You are really trying to make a long term decision.

"With hindsight, would you choose a different time? Maybe."

There are analysts who "think his timing was off," said Thomas McCrohan, a banking analyst with Janney Montgomery Scott in Philadelphia. But he believes McGuinn and his management team "have taken some unfair knocks on that." It made sense, McCrohan said, for Mellon to get out of lending.

Mark Fitzgibbon, a banking analyst with Sandler O'Neill and Partners in New York, called McGuinn a "highly capable guy" who "has done a very solid job." He just had the misfortune of taking over during a recession. "The markets were not as cooperative as when Frank Cahouet was running the place," Fitzgibbon said -- at least, not in Cahouet's later years.

In his early years, of course, Cahouet has been credited with saving a storied bank burdened with huge losses on Third World and energy loans, and on the verge of collapse, in the late 1980s. His push to diversify Mellon by acquiring fund administration and record-keeping stalwart Boston Co. in 1993, followed by mutual fund giant Dreyfus a year later, putting Mellon on the inexorable path away from traditional banking.

Dick Bove, a banking analyst with Punk, Ziegel & Co., is less willing to blame the market for Mellon's so-so performance under McGuinn. McGuinn's reputation in the industry is "not strong," he said.

The emphasis on money management and downgrading of banking worked under Cahouet, but "when Cahouet was doing it, it was the right thing. When McGuinn brought it to the next level, the game (was) over."

McGuinn "believed strongly in the strategy," Bove said. "The issue is whether he should have questioned the strategy and clearly he didn't."

McGuinn refused to qualify any of his decisions as "mistakes" or defeats."

"You know, maybe that is just you media always trying to find headlines and everything like that. I don't think mistakes or defeats are frankly a fair way of looking at things ... We are in the risk management business, you know, and if every risk you take works out, by definition, you are not taking enough risk."

McGuinn also emphasized that he feels no pressure to put together a blockbuster deal to improve the company's standing or stock performance. He did not rule out a merger, though, saying "we will consider any transaction that we think makes sense for our shareholders."

Nor did he completely deny the merger speculation floated by The Wall Street Journal in August. The newspaper described "talks" held with rivals Merrill Lynch, Legg Mason Inc., State Street Corp. and Northern Trust Corp.

"I am a member of trade associations and things like that," McGuinn said. "Do I talk to X, Y and Z? Yes, so it is literally true, although not in all the cases they cited ... But are we having, quote, discussions? The answer to that is, 'No.' "

Talk about a merger intensified when Mellon's board announced, on Sept. 23 that it had retained an executive search firm to look for McGuinn's replacement. McGuinn argued the search "underscores the fact that we are not for sale, because generally a CEO doesn't want to come into a company and find out it is going to be sold."

But Bove, of Punk, Ziegel & Company, argued in a research note that "this announcement will open the door for outside bidders to contact the company seeking to acquire it. Thus, the likelihood that the new CEO of Mellon could in fact be the CEO of an acquiring company is now a real prospect."

In an interview, Bove also suggested the announcement was a clear sign that the board had no faith in Mellon's homegrown talent. "If the board is seeking outside help for a CEO, it implies they are unhappy with the way things are happening internally." When Cahouet's successor was chosen, the choice generally was believed to be three insiders, with McGuinn at the top.

Other analysts, however, disagreed with Bove's take on the succession search.

"I don't think they are putting up a for-sale sign," said Sandler O'Neill's Fitzgibbon. Searching far and wide for the best candidates makes sense, he said, and in the end, "I think there is a good probability they will select someone from within the organization."

Two likely candidates, according to Fitzgibbon, are Senior Vice Chairman Steven Elliott and Vice Chairman Ron O'Hanley.

At first, the McGuinn succession announcement sounded like a sale signal to McCrohan, the Philadelphia banking analyst. Thinking it through, though, produced a different opinion.

"It may be opposite," he said. Perhaps "it demonstrates we are trying to be open-minded and looking outside the firm and remain independent and find the best person for the job."

Asked if all of the second guessing bothered him, McGuinn said, "Of course."

But he views himself as a "prudent risk taker" who stuck with the right long-term strategy, one that will "prove to be right."

Some of the bear-market years under McGuinn were rough, admitted Mellon spokesman Ken Herz. But, "I never once heard him complain about it," Herz said. "Never once, never."