Josephine Holt Perfect Bay: The First Woman to Head a NYSE Member Firm

-

Josephine Holt Perfect Bay was the first woman to the head a member firm of the New York Stock Exchange and is the only female executive in the Ford Motor Company Syndicate.


In 1940, Charles U. Bay became senior partner of A.M. Kidder & Co. In 1946, however, he became Ambassador to Norway under President Harry Truman and took a leave of absence from the firm until 1953. In 1955, when Bay died, he owned about 71% of the firm’s stock. After his death, in 1956, Charles’s wife, Josephine Perfect Bay, assumed his position as the president and chairman of A.M. Kidder & Co., Inc. because the New York Stock Exchange rules required any stockholder who owned “more than 45% of a member company’s shares” to either sell or “take an active part in the firm.”

Born in Iowa, Josephine Holt Perfect Bay (1900-1962) was raised in Brooklyn. The daughter of Otis Lincoln Perfect (1860-1919), a real estate broker, she was a graduate of the Brooklyn Heights Seminary (1916) and studied at Colorado College at Colorado Springs. She and Charles U. Bay married in 1942. In 1959, she remarried to Capton Michael Paul (1901-1980), a widower and a native of Ulanvdinsk, Outer Mongolia. Paul’s father, Michael A. Iogolevitch, had been the Surgeon General under Czar Nicholas. A trained violinist, Paul immigrated to the United States in 1917. In 1919, he opened a branch bank in Harbin, Manchuria for the National City Bank of New York after meeting Frank A. Vanderlip, the bank’s president. In 1922, he started his own firm dealing in precious stones and art. Eventually he settled in Texas, where he entered the oil business. He joined the NYSE in 1933.

In 1962, Josephine Bay Paul died and the following year, C. Michael Paul, then the president, chairman and chief stockholder of A.M. Kidder & Co., Inc., decided to sell the firm to Reynolds & Co. and Francis I. duPont & Co. Paul said, “Since I have had no one to share the burden of running the firm as I had when Mrs. Paul was alive, I thought it best to hand it over to others. I want to have more free time for all my activities—the medical and educational philanthropies with which I’m connected and also my bowling and fishing.” According to Paul, Reynolds and duPont approached him about the sale, which was for cash. Paul said that he did not want to devote the time necessary to expand the business and maintain its quality so he decided to sell.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Francis I. duPont & Co. Genealogy: Part XIII

-
Image
William R. Staats & Co., Continued F.I. duPont, Glore Forgan & Co. (1970) Wall Street was particularly interested in the fate of the new firm because duPont, Hirsch and Glore Forgan were all considered "substantial houses prior to the merger, but all were experiencing some kind of financial difficulty." The New York Times reported, "Many of Wall Street's managers believe mergers will provide the key to that future, since they theoretically will enable brokerage houses to find economies of scale that were unavailable to them before F.I. duPont, Glore Forgan & Co. probably will be a case study for the whole industry." The hope was that the merger would diversify the firm's services and its geographic footprint while also cutting costs. Hirsch & Co. was known to have "retail strength in metropolitan New York and Florida as well as Europe" while "Glore was a major-bracket investment banking house with a retail system largely ...
Read more

Francis I. duPont & Co. Genealogy: Part XVII

-
Image
Walston & Co., Inc., Continued Death of the Founder (1964) Walston & Co., Inc. suffered a terrible blow on May 5, 1964, when its founder, Vernon Walston, committed suicide at his office at 72 Wall Street. On his way to work that morning, he had told his chauffeur, Gustav Puigdollers, that he was going to kill himself. When they got to the office, Puigdollers went to call Walston's wife. Walston was a big-game hunter and his office was full of trophies from his hunting trips and a double barreled shotgun. Walston went into his office, took the shotgun and shot himself through the mouth. No note was left, but his associated noted that Walston has been looking "despondent" and speaking "incoherently." According to The New York Times , the day before Walston killed himself, he had a telephone interview with a Times reporter where, "speaking in an agitated voice, he expressed great dissatisfaction with the amount of stock the Walston firm was...
Read more

Francis I. duPont & Co. Genealogy: Part I

-
Image
In 1974, DuPont Walston was liquidated. At that time, the histories of Francis I. duPont & Co., Glore Forgan & Co., Wm. R. Staats, Inc., Hirsch & Co., A.C. Allyn & Co. and Walston & Co., six members of the Ford Motor Company Syndicate, came to an end. Over the next several posts, we will take a closer look into the histories of each of these firms and how they all eventually became a part of DuPont Walston. Origins Eleuthére Irénée du Pont (1771-1834) founded his namesake firm, E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., a chemical manufacturer, in 1802. A French immigrant and the son of a watchmaker, E.I. du Pont demonstrated an interest in the study of gunpowder from a young age. His mentor was Antoine Lavoisier , the French chemist. In 1799, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, du Pont's family immigrated to the United States. Though he returned briefly to France in 1801, du Pont settled in Delaware, where he founded the first of many gunpowder mills. ...
Read more