About

"Where Are They Now?" is a collaboration between historian Susie J. Pak and the Museum of American Finance. This blog will supplement the series published in Financial History Magazine.

In the mid-20th century, there were hundreds of investment banks and brokerage houses across the United States. Starting in the 1960s, these firms began to disappear. This change has not gone unnoticed, particularly by members of the financial community, who experienced this change in their own lifetimes. In 2012, when Barron's published an article titled "Where Have You Gone, Blyth Eastman, Dillon Paine Webber Peabody?," its sentiments echoed those of many, who felt as though they had lived through a "Darwinian evolution" of sorts.

Barron's point of reference for this change was the fate of the syndicate that underwrote Ford Motor Company's historic initial public offering (IPO) in 1956 - a group of 205 top banks from the United States and Canada. In 2016, the Museum of American Finance began a research project to investigate what happened to the firms of this historic syndicate. Starting with the 205 firms listed on the Ford Motor Company IPO tombstone, the project reconstructs a genealogy of each bank focusing on its origin and demise. The project studies the social origins of the founders, when the family of founders ceased to be members of the firm, when the firm became a corporation and/or went public, as well as when and why it disappeared. The narratives reveal overarching patterns regarding the consolidation and change in the American banking community in the 20th century.


About the Museum of American Finance

The Museum of American Finance, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, is the nation's only museum dedicated to preserving, exhibiting and teaching about finance and financial history. The Museum is an independent, non-profit 
501(c)(3) committed to creating non-ideological presentations and programs for purposes of education and general public awareness. 

About Susie Pak

Susie J. Pak is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at St. John's University (New York). A graduate of Dartmouth College and Cornell University, she is the author of Gentlemen Bankers: The World of J.P. Morgan (Harvard University Press). She is a Trustee of the Business History Conference and co-chair of the Columbia University Economic History Seminar. She also serves on the Editorial Advisory Board, Business History Review.

About Chuck Royce

Charles M. Royce, Chairman of the Royce Funds, is known as one of the pioneers of small-cap investing. He has been the portfolio manager for Roye Pennsylvania Mutual Fund since 1972. Prior to that, he served as the Director of Research at Scheinman, Hochstin, Trotta and as a security analyst at Blair & Co. Mr. Royce holds a bachelor's degree from Brown University and a Master of Business Administration from Columbia University.

Mr. Royce has generously funded the research for the "Where Are They Now?" Series, as well as the 2015 Museum of American Finance research project and book, Genealogy of American Finance.

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