The Morgan Lineage in U.S. Financial History

摘要

With assets of $2.687 trillion, JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States. I covered the history of two of its three major components, the Bank of the Manhattan Company and Chase National Bank, in previous columns. Now it's time for the most storied of all the major components: J. P. Morgan & Co. Unlike most plutocrats of the Gilded Age, John Pierpont Morgan was born rich. His grandfather had been one of the founders of the Aetna Fire Insurance Company and his father, Junius Spencer Morgan, an international banker of the first rank. So Morgan received a first-class education, earning a degree in art history from the University of Gottingen. He was fluent in both French and German, invaluable assets in the burgeoning world of international banking.