Financial History Issue 124 (Winter 2018) | Page 15
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Blyth & Co.
“Investment banking is essentially
a personal service business,
and an investment organization is
essentially an aggregation of people.”
The Blyth Story (1964: 103)
By Susie J. Pak
The origin of Blyth & Co. traces back
to the founding of the firm of Louis Sloss
& Co., a family partnership whose growth
was intimately intertwined with the eco-
nomic development of the American West.
The founders of Blyth & Co. were former
employees of Louis Sloss & Co., and Sloss’s
commercial network served as the base
from which Blyth would build its early
reputation as a regional investment bank.
A native of Bavaria, Louis Sloss immi-
grated to Louisville, Kentucky in 1845.
Soon after working for his older brother’s
wholesale grocery business, Sloss was lured
Portrait of the chief underwriters of the Ford
stock and Ford Foundation, dated December 12,
1955. Pictured are, from left, George Woods (First
Boston Corporation), Charles Blyth (Chairman of
Blyth and Company), John M. Schiff (Kuhn, Loeb),
Sidney Weinberg (Goldman Sachs), Alexander
White (White, Weld), Robert Lehman (Lehman
Brothers) and Winthrop Smith (Merrill Lynch,
Pierce, Fenner and Beane).
www.MoAF.org | Winter 2018 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 13