The Last Partnerships: Inside the Great Wall Street Dynasties

Long part of the Wall Street financial structure, the great partnerships of Wall Street ruled American finance from the turn of the 19th century with a combination of financial expertise, political power, and a mythical power that borrowed on true folklore. These money dynasties have disappeared from the financial landscape. While their place has been taken by the large well-capitalized securities firms of the 21st century, it is doubtful whether any 21st century firm could match their influence in helping develop American capitalism. Their histories often read like a soap opera, full of stories of financial wixadry, skulluggery and occasionally love and violence. The partners of the firms were amony New York's, and the country's, best-known and colourful figures. Their largesses and excesses became part of American folklore. The Seligmans helped support Mary Todd Lincoln after her husband was assassinated. Jay Cooke feverishly raised money for the Unioon during the Civil War. J.P. Morgan helped bail out the Treasury during the financial crisis of 1839-94. On the other side of the coin, their inability to recognize the dangers of the 1920s market helped bring about the 1929 Crash and their lack of leadership in its aftermath resulted directly in the securities and banking regulations of the 1930s during the New Deal. This text takes the reader back inside the boardrooms of the most superior and exclusive Wall Street partnerships where it discusses their influence, deals, successes and multi-million dollar losses over the years. Throughout it examines the forces that made the dynasties the financial arbiters of the 19th and 20th centuries - and then rendered them virtually obsolete by the end of the 20th century.

Table of Contents:
Introduction. Chapter 1: The Yankee Banking Houses: Clark Dodge and Jay Cooke. Chapter 2: "Our Crowd": The Seligmans, Lehman Brothers, and Kuhn Loeb. Chapter 3: White Shoes and Racehorses: Brown Brothers Harriman and August Belmont. Chapter 4: Crashed and Absorbed: Kidder Peabody and Dillon Read. Chapter 5: Corner of Broad and Wall: J. P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley. Chapter 6: Corner of Wall and Main: Merrill Lynch and E. F. Hutton. Chapter 7: Unraveled by Greed: Salomon Brothers and Drexel Burnham. Chapter 8: The Last Holdouts: Goldman Sachs and Lazard Freres.

About the Author :
Charles R. Geisst, professor of finance at Manhattan College, is the author of ten books including Wall Street: A History (1997) which was a New York Times Business Bestseller, selection of the History Book Club and the Book of the Month Club, and on the Canadian Business Bestseller list. In addition, Mr. Geisst is being considered as a featured expert on the subject of Wall Street for a television documentary currently being developed by Peter Guber (Columbia Studios). One of his other recent books, Investment Banking in the Financial System (Prentice Hall, 1995) was recently published in Beijing in a Chinese language edition. Geisst has been a frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg Television, and Nippon TV.

Review :
"Geisst creditably describes the forces at work in the creation of capital, providing some sociological context through ethnicity and gender issues."