This might be of interest to folks, it is a list of old financial firms that have been gobbled up or gone bankrupt. Interestingly, a lot of the banks on this list were once considered the "leading bank in the country" or the historical equivalent of to big to fail.
Most of them still exist in some form or another, mostly as part of continuing firms.
- Kidder Peabody (founded in 1865 in Boston, it was bought by GE in 1986, then sold to Paine Webber in 1994, now part of UBS)
- Salomon Brothers (founded in 1910, bought by Travelers in 1998, merged with Citibank in 1998, partially sold to Morgan Stanley in 2009)
- J.P. Morgan (founded in 1871, bought by Chase Manhattan in 2000)
- Manufactures Hanover (Buffalo NY founded firm that bought Chemical keeping the Chemical name, then bough Chase, but kept the Chase name)
- Paine Webber (founded in 1880, it bought Kidder Peabody in 1994, sold itself to UBS in 2000, UBS killed the name in 2003)
- Dillon Read & Co.(a 150 year old Baltimore based firm that was bought by Union Bank of Switzerland)
- Warburg & Co. (a NYC based firm bought by Union Bank of Switzerland)
- Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (a NYC based firm was bought by Credit Suisse)
- Cowen & Co. (founded in 1908, bought by Societe Generale in 1998, partial spun off in 2006)
- First Boston (150 year old Boston based firm bought by Credit Suisse)
- White Weld & Co. (founded in Boston during the 1800s, it took walmart public in 1970, and it was acquired by Merrill Lynch in 1978)
- Bache & Co. (founded as a commodities firm in 1879, grew into an investment bank, was purchased by Prudential in 1981)
- E. F. Hutton (founded in 1904, it merged with Shearson Lehman/American Express in 1988, eventually died with Lehman Brothers)
- Kuhn Loeb & Co. (New York firm founded in 1867, it merged with Lehman Brothers in 1977)
- Dean Witter (bought by Sears, then spun off, then it bought Morgan Stanley, then Morgan Stanley turned and killed it in an act of self-defense)
- Drexel Burnham Lambert (founded in 1838 in Philadelphia, normally associated with Mike Milken, it went bankrupt in 1990 shortly after a settlement with the Gov.)
- G. H. Walker & Co. (funded in 1900, it was acquired by White Weld & Co. in 1974, eventually became part of Bank of America / Merrill Lynch)
- Alex. Brown & Sons (founded in 1800 in Baltimore, was the first investment bank in the United States, was purchased by Bankers Trust in 1997, which was purchased by Deutsche Bank in 1999)
- Bankers Trust (founded in 1903 by J.P. Morgan and other prominent financiers to provide trust services to customers of state and national banks throughout the United States, purchased by Deutsche Bank in 1999)
.
-First Chicago -La Salle -Fleet Boston
Wow. There's a trip down memory lane. I know a lot of guys who worked for many on that list (before they were toast/acquired).
Credit Suisse First Boston was a monster merger when it finally happened. Dominated the IPO market for a while.
Prudential made an absolute mess of the Bache merger, too. In the early 90's you'd have rather told people you worked at Taco Bell than Pru-Bache.
Believe me, guys, 20 years from now you're gonna be talking to noobs and saying, "Yeah, I remember when Merrill Lynch was still the Thundering Herd" etc... Just the nature of our business.
Would be interested in hearing more about the Pru-Bache merger.
It's hard to remember the shady shit they got into in the late 80s and early 90s, but it was pretty bad. It was sufficiently bad that they were offering boiler room guys like me six-figure signing bonuses to come work there. I seem to remember it being mortgage related, but don't quote me on that. Anyway, it was no place you wanted to work (I'll do almost anything for money, and I turned them down - if that's any indication of how bad their rep was at the time).
bear stearns merrill lynch wachovia lehman ryan beck thomas weisel
oh... madoff securities stanford financial group
Prudential bought Bache & Co. (1981) Wachovia bought Prudential. (2003) Wells Fargo bought Wachovia. (2008)
Who will buy Wells Fargo?
Barings Bank thanks to old Nick Leeson
Who went on to run a professional soccer team when he got out of jail...
Who is now running that team into a financial disaster too....
Regarding the OP, an investment bank in Buffalo, NY seems funny now....
Why isnt credit Suisse dominant like gs or ms when they bought first Boston and dlj? Both were dominant in m&a and high yield respectively
Can't buy long term success. New mismanagment can ruin the best.
Looking at the merger histories of the current banks on wikipedia is always interesting. They have some pretty cool family tree-like things.
Barings Cazenove
When I first saw this list it sparked two memories.
There is a passage in "Blue Blood & Mutiny" about an old Morgan Stanley partner who had an old WSJ tombstone framed in his office that listed about two dozen book runners for some debt offering. Each time one of the competition went out of business or was acquired he would cross out their name with a red pencil. I would imagine that of that list there might only be two names left on Wall Street.
Awhile ago I was at a recruiting event for Citi, and the oddest thing kept happening. The Citi bankers were not referencing Citi when they pitched us. They kept referencing Solomon Brothers, talking about it as if it still existed. It was almost as if the bankers did not want to consider themselves part of the problems that Citi has been going through and felt that they could project the past into the future if they tried hard enough and said the name Solomon often enough. It was a pretty surreal experience. Made event more classic when one of the other folks at the event asked me what Solomon Brothers was.
Our memories are short.
Great point. I've experienced the exact same thing, except with Barcap guys reflecting back on Lehman. They definitely spent more time pitching their Lehman experiences than their Barcap ones.
This is definitely true-almost everyone at barcap basically still considers it to be legacy Lehman(which most of it truly is...)
I know what you are talking about, we had a bunch of Wells Fargo guys pitch us (completely sober) and they kept referring to their bank as Wachovia. This made us all really uncomfortable, as we had no idea how to engage them in conversation. We all were sort of confused until we grabbed a beer after as a group and realized that the MDs were making a freuidian slip as a group. They kept saying Wachovia out of habit, I think that if we had asked them about it they would have likely denied that it happened.
For the record, I stand by the fact that none of the Citi guys could have been making a slip about Solomon Brothers, no one forgets that they were bought over a decade ago. Yeah, I will buy 18 months, but ten years is a hard row to hoe.
Bache just acquired by Jefferies
Those guys have been on a tear lately, buying up everything in sight.
Man remember when ML was the shit....
The founder of my firm has been around forever, worked for Securities Pacific in the days of RJR Nabisco.
Forgot about Morgan, Grenfell & Co., bought out by DB in 1990
Also J Aron & Company which was acquired by Goldman Sachs in 1980. I have talked to a couple older energy traders and they told me that J Aron was a lot like Saloman Brothers in terms of big swinging dick/ liars poker culture. Goldman was considered as a white shoe firm whose man focus was on M&A at this point in time.
An older trader told me that when Goldman first bought out J Aron they were scared of the commodities traders. He told me how the traders used to yell and scream at the junior employees all time. They especially hated the Goldman guys because they thought they were all ivy league pricks. While the Goldman guys thought that J Aron guys were bunch of uneducated idiots.
Apparently there was one person that the J Aron guys used to pick on all the time. They used to yell and throw phones at him. He was a young salesmen just starting out in the commodity business. His name was Lloyd Blankfein
Hill Samuel Kleinwort Benson Wasserstein Perella Schroders Morgan Grenfell Flemings ABN AMRO Hambros
Comprehensive list is here:
http://news.hereisthecity.com/2004/11/07/top_firm_deceased_li/
[quote=Tier2Sta]Hill Samuel Kleinwort Benson Wasserstein Perella Schroders Morgan Grenfell Flemings ABN AMRO Hambros
Comprehensive list is here:
http://news.hereisthecity.com/2004/11/07/top_firm_deceased_li/[/quote]
Wasserstein Perella is the template for killing it in this business. Total smash-and-grab kinda deal. They were all First Boston guys who took their show on the road when Credit Suisse bought the firm, and they ended up selling out for over a billion dollars a little over ten years later. Bruce went on to take over Lazard and ended up taking them public. Homeboy was a beast.
goldsmith agio helms..lazard middle market
Carnegie Wylie - Bought by Lazard
BZW (bought by Barclays) Greenwich Capital Markets (bought by RBS)
LOL. Who owns 'em now?
Still RBS... They used the name RBS Greenwich Capital after they were bought and then a couple years ago they started just going by RBS Securities.
Met one of the old DLJ guys . . . honestly, the brain dump from that kid in Citi, but Lehman is the biggest I can think of.
Imperial acquired Mercanti in 2009.
I have ML, BS and Leh on my resume..... it hurts
McDonald Investments JC Bradford & Co Piper Jaffray's brokerge unit
All bought by PaineWebber/UBS
Add UBS to the list.
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