Financial History Issue 129 (Spring 2019) | Page 7
MUSEUM NEWS
THE TICKER
MoAF Launches “Where Are They Now?” Blog
On March 13, the Museum launched a
companion blog for its “Where Are They
Now?” Series, which traces the histories
and origins of 207 of the underwriters
of the 1956 Ford Motor Company IPO.
“Where Are They Now?” is a collabora-
tion between historian Susie J. Pak and
the Museum of American Finance, and
the research for this series has been gen-
erously funded by Charles Royce of The
Royce Funds. The blog can be accessed
from the Museum’s website (www.moaf
.org) or directly at wherearetheynowblog.
blogspot.com.
In the mid-20th century, there were
hundreds of investment banks and bro-
kerage 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 lifetimes.
In 2012, when Barron’s published an
article titled “Where Have You Gone,
Blyth Eastman, Dillon Paine Webber Pea-
body?,” 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 under-
wrote Ford Motor Company’s historic
initial public offering (IPO) in 1956—a
group of more than 200 top banks from
the United States and Canada.
In 2016, MoAF began a research project
to investigate what happened to the firms
of this historic syndicate. Starting with the
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 cor-
poration and/or went public, as well as
when and why it disappeared. The narra-
tives reveal overarching patterns regard-
ing the consolidation and change in the
American banking community in the 20th
century.
Articles from the “Where Are They
Now?” series have been published in every
issue of Financial History magazine since
Fall 2017. See page 32 for Susie Pak’s latest
“Where Are They Now?” article on the
history of Bache & Co. (founded in New
York in 1891).
www.MoAF.org | Spring 2019 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 5