Your favorite financier from the past

Hi all,

This entertaining post is for the history and financial history monkeys out there. What is your favorite financier of the past and why? Most of us have read about the Weinbergs and Rohatyns of the past but I'd like to hear about the less known but equally inspiring figures of the 20th century and older.

Cheers!
Torero

 
Torero:
I'd like to hear about the less known but equally inspiring figures of the 20th century and older.

Probably Hammurabi, King of the first dynasty of Babylon, who made the first known attempt to regulate interest rates in 1800 BC.

He is more well known for his 'code'... 'eye for an eye' and the like... which really makes you think. What is the price to pay for injury to self? Injury lawyers worldwide including Saul Goodman would be proud. But, ethically is it right? We have the laws in place in the US which condemn cruel and unusual punishment, which is a direct reflection of how far we have come since Hammurabi. In ethics and finance.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

I've always been fascinated by Robert Morris. Was the original US Treasurer, though didn't hold the title. Had the first chance at the gig, but didn't want to give up his lifestyle. Alas, Hamilton became the first Treasury Secretary of the US.

 
  • Michael Robert Milken

Chrysler and Mattel were among many companies rescued from bankruptcy by Milken's junk bonds. He provided capital to more than 3,000 companies, including what are now Barnes & Noble, Time Warner, Mellon Financial, Hasbro and Calvin Klein.

Milken's "junk" helped Ted Turner create CNN.. a few weeks later Turner announced that he'd donate $1 billion to UN causes.

What concert costs 45 cents? 50 Cent feat. Nickelback.
 

Milken is impressive. Invented a whole new market for junk bonds. Basically invented PE industry. He did some shady stuff but have to be impressed with guys who were the first.

But I can think of 10 guys similar to him. Keynes invented modern macro even if he didn’t get everything right. Even a guy like Friedman whose viewed as his opposition really was a guy critiquing and improving what Keynes wrote.

Soros is impressive. A foundational guy.

Buffet I think is a whole hypocrite and does it knowingly. He plays one rule on tv - as a buy and hold forever folksy Guy - but that isn’t how he made his first fortune. Besides the fact he’s had like 3 wives for the last thirty years. Actually really respect how well he manipulates the media but lives his life differently. Folksy buy and hold forever value investor with midwestern values whose done some of that buy is really a stock flipper with multiple mistresses and I think even a strange daughter he’s cut off. There is no greater hypocrite in the world but he’s a master manipulator so I respect that.

I’m probably missing a ton. But I love guys who completely invented new things.

I do wander if I were in soros shoes 50 years ago if I could have made that kind of money. The edges in markets were huge back then. For Buffett too. Any reasonable intelligent guy with the knowledge we know today in those markets would have made a fortune.

 

I don't understand the knock on Buffet here. Is it jealousy? That's what it sounds like.

First of all, he's been with two women in LT relationships. Who cares if they have some odd threesome relationship? Good for him.

Second, he made his fortune with long-term investing. Like everyone else in the world, his thoughts / philosophy will change. If you maintain the same approach you did in your 20s/30s into your 80s without any change, changes are you're probably screwing up somewhere. Buffet just realized that one, it was less of a hassle when you owned the business & had a trusted manager, upside was attractive, and at some point had too much capital to deploy, so he just bought businesses outright. And he transitioned from rigid definitions of value investing to more fluid ones, learning to value growth more. But his fundamental ideas have not changed, back when he started his fund to today.

He's not a hypocrite by any means. He is pretty folksy, but what, now that excludes him from having any sins? You judge him with standards that you yourself would miserably fail with, so if anyone's the hypocrite here, it's you.

 
vegan:
- Michael Robert Milken

Chrysler and Mattel were among many companies rescued from bankruptcy by Milken's junk bonds. He provided capital to more than 3,000 companies, including what are now Barnes & Noble, Time Warner, Mellon Financial, Hasbro and Calvin Klein.

Milken's "junk" helped Ted Turner create CNN.. a few weeks later Turner announced that he'd donate $1 billion to UN causes.

Yeah I have read some interesting books on Milken. I think one was Predator's Ball and other might have been James Stewart's Den of Thieves. Ivan Boesky was in the latter if I recall correctly.

But, yeah, Milken seemed impressive. He wore a lot of hats, and apparently was studying on the bus every morning at 4am. He seemed to never stop.

I wonder if the heavy hours for him led to make shady ethical decisions, or if the heavy hours were just his drive and the decisions were acceptable to him no matter what the state.

Or he just thought he wouldn't get caught ...

And then what a rebound after he got out of jail, after being banned by the industry, but creating success in the realm of prostate cancer.

This guy ..... impressive.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
Best Response

Ivar Kreugar - The Match King (great book by the way):

Inventor of: - Series B Shares with differential voting rights - Convertible Debentures, payable in gold - American Certificates – part bond, part preferred share, part equity - Binary Foreign Exchange Options o This one actually sunk him, the security for the options was the largest ever loan to a foreign government (German), two days before the outbreak of WWII - Off Balance Sheet Entities o Rationalized it at the shareholder's meeting in 1926. He said "it is only customary to consolidate the assets and liabilities of companies in such a balance sheet when a substantial majority of the outstanding shares are owned by the parent company. Where less than such a majority is owned, the shares are included as investments." – Of course it doesn’t matter if the company is owned 100% by thee or more companies that you own…

 

There's a famous legend, but spun by us French I'm told by wikipedia, that one of the London Rothschilds, Nathan Rothschild, from the Napoleonic era made his fortune by playing the markets exceptionally well.

In 1815, it was a lengthy process for word of the outcome of a battle to reach a country's respective capital, and many in London had no idea for what the outcome of the battle of Waterloo would be, and knew only that Wellington intended to make his stand in the small Belgian hovel. Many even held out little hope that the British and Dutch forces might be triumphant over the rejunevated French army of the Hundred days', and awaited for an outcome no different than at Quatre-bras where a week prior, the French had beaten back a stronger British force. To bypass this however, the acting Lord Rothschild of the London branch had a man on the ground, and when the British and Prussians drove back the French army, it's said that this agent dashed for London as quick as he could to announce the news only to his master.

Lord Rothschild therefore knew the outcome of the battle before anyone else in London did, and an unexpected outcome at that too. And so to give the idea that he had been informed of a defeat, and that a French invasion might come soon, he proceeeded to the Lodon stock exchange where he dumped and dumped his "consols". The whole of London's investors were swirled into a panic, and they too started selling their own, driving prices exceptionally low. Only then did Lord Rothschild start to buy again, for an extremely cheap price, and it's said he made a fortune that day rebuying all these consols.

As per wikipedia, To the Rothschilds, [England's] chief financial agents, Waterloo brought a many million pound scoop. ... a Rothschild agent ... jumped into a boat at Ostend ... Nathan Rothschild ... let his eye fly over the lead paragraphs. A moment later he was on his way to London (beating Wellington's envoy by many hours) to tell the government that Napoleon had been crushed: but his news was not believed, because the government had just heard of the English defeat at Quatre Bras. Then he proceeded to the Stock Exchange. Another man in his position would have sunk his work into consols [bank annuities], already weak because of Quatre Bras. But this was Nathan Rothschild. He leaned against "his" pillar. He did not invest. He sold. He dumped consols. ... Consols dropped still more. "Rothschild knows," the whisper rippled through the 'Change. "Waterloo is lost." Nathan kept on selling, ... consols plummeted – until, a split second before it was too late, Nathan suddenly bought a giant parcel for a song. Moments afterwards the great news broke, to send consols soaring. We cannot guess the number of hopes and savings wiped out by this engineered panic.

And since you've broached the subject, has anybody here read Niall Ferguson's "The Ascent of Money"? Any good?

 

I'm reading the book "The Rothschilds" right now. Insane story. At the time, They needed the European monarchs just as much as the monarchs needed a family like them. Thanks for the share, SB'd.

Carl Van Loon Van Loon & Associates
 

Did you know apparently Baruch did some very important work for GS Securities but never actually worked for GS because he had the "stigma" of being associated with a brokerage house that had gone under? GS had the policy of never directly hiring talent from failed firms. Baruch was forever a consultant for GS.

Carl Van Loon Van Loon & Associates
 

If I'm talking strictly bankers:

-Late 1800s Rothschilds: what they did with mining deals is absolutely nuts and probably the closest thing to what I'm trying to accomplish in my career. -Andre Meyer, Michel David-Weill: Turned a French boutique into an M&A powerhouse by having balls and picking the right guys. -Jean-Charles Naouri: By French standards this guy has had the most epic career you could possibly think of.

 

House of Medici and Knights Templar. Knights Templar invented an early form of banking that contributed to the Crusades. It also had business dealings all over Europe and the Middle East, and it could be called a multinational corporation. House of Medici needs no explanation. Their financial power gave political and religious authorities to the family.

 

greatest in the last 50 years? without a doubt Warren Buffett. no one has matched his record for about the same amount of time. of course his record has been slowing down with the increasing size of his company. in addition to that, his character is extraordinary. he's the third richest man in the world, yet he lives extremely modest, driving used cars, eating mcdonalds, drinking coke, and lives in a modest house he bought 50 years ago. to top it all, he's donated all of his money to charity. even millionaires lives more outlandish than he does.

 
funkee monkee:
greatest in the last 50 years? without a doubt Warren Buffett. no one has matched his record for about the same amount of time. of course his record has been slowing down with the increasing size of his company. in addition to that, his character is extraordinary. he's the third richest man in the world, yet he lives extremely modest, driving used cars, eating mcdonalds, drinking coke, and lives in a modest house he bought 50 years ago. to top it all, he's donated all of his money to charity. even millionaires lives more outlandish than he does.

...yet avoiding taxes (charitable organizations/illiquid investments) at all costs despite his "Buffett Rule". Buffett is a billionaire and people do not become billionaires by being altruistic. Modest? Money is made to be spent, what use can you give it by hiding it in a drawer? I'm not saying people show blow their bonuses but healthy cash flow is what'll keep global economies going.

[quote]The HBS guys have MAD SWAGGER. They frequently wear their class jackets to boston bars, strutting and acting like they own the joint. They just ooze success, confidence, swagger, basically attributes of alpha males.[/quote]
 

Marc Rich, by far the best commodity trader of all times.

[quote]The HBS guys have MAD SWAGGER. They frequently wear their class jackets to boston bars, strutting and acting like they own the joint. They just ooze success, confidence, swagger, basically attributes of alpha males.[/quote]
 

I don't think that there can be a greatest financier, unless you divide it into categories VC: Jim Rogers HF: Warren Buffet or George Soros(made a billion in a day)

The Four E's of investment "The greatest Enemies of the Equity investor are Expenses and Emotions."- Warren Buffet
 

I wish people were a bit more serious as this is a very interesting topic. I think there are 4 categories of financiers here, which are a bit hard to compare: venture capitalists, investors/HF managers, bankers, and good old traders. So, 1) venture capitalist - John Doerr (funded Amazon, Google). 2) Investor - Warren Buffet - there are a lot of candidates here but probably each one of them looks up to WB. Simply the most impressive track record. 3) Banker - J.P. Morgan (the person) 4) Trader - I'm not very knowledgeable here, but I'd say Paul Tudor Jones or Steven Cohen.

Do what you want not what you can!
 
bossman:
I wish people were a bit more serious as this is a very interesting topic. I think there are 4 categories of financiers here, which are a bit hard to compare: venture capitalists, investors/HF managers, bankers, and good old traders. So, 1) venture capitalist - John Doerr (funded Amazon, Google). 2) Investor - Warren Buffet - there are a lot of candidates here but probably each one of them looks up to WB. Simply the most impressive track record. 3) Banker - J.P. Morgan (the person) 4) Trader - I'm not very knowledgeable here, but I'd say Paul Tudor Jones or Steven Cohen.

nice observations

 
SynergyWeek:
Who, in your opinion, has been the greatest financier/banker of the past 50 years? With the size of the industry there are so many possible answers, I'm surprised it isn't discussed on here more often.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the late Bruce Wasserstein. Probably because most of you guys were in high school when he passed away and he doesn't have his name on any of your ATM machines...

Definitely one of the most influential bankers of the past 50 years.

In terms of non-banker financiers, I would go with Henry Kravis and George Roberts (KKR) as they fathered the PE industry as we know it today and have probably influenced more companies than Buffett will in two lifetimes.

If we move away from the traditional definition of "financier", we should include Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies for the nature of his work and possibly Bill Gross of PIMCO simply for the scale and influence of his business.

 

Past 50 years? Andre Meyer and Felix Rohatyn probably, maybe Frankie Q too as far as banking is concerned.

People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis, you can't trust people Jeremy
 

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Do what you want not what you can!
 

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