Subscription warrant for stock of the First Boston Corporation, issued to Laura A. Atkins and dated May 26, 1934.
member of Bankers Trust and a New
Mexico native, was the president and chief
operating officer of the firm, having suc-
ceeded Archibald Cox Jr. in 1993. (The
son of Archibald Cox Sr., the special
prosecutor during the Watergate scandal,
Cox joined the firm from Morgan Stanley
International in 1990.) During Wheat’s
tenure, the firm bought the brokerage
firm, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, Inc.
and DLJ’s chief executive, Joe L. Roby,
became chairman of the executive board.
(Roby became chairman emeritus in late
2001.) In 2001, however, Wheat was fired
after Credit Suisse became embroiled in
a scandal where it was accused by the
Securities and Exchange Commission of
receiving “extra large commissions from
investors in exchange for allocations of
hot public offerings.” (The firm paid a
$100 million fine in 2002.) Wheat was
replaced by John Mack, who was the for-
mer president of Morgan Stanley Dean
Witter. A North Carolina native, Mack
was “the son of a Lebanese-American gro-
cer.” In 2004, Mack left First Boston after
conflicts with the board over the direction
of the firm. He was succeeded by Brady
W. Dougan, who had been with CS First
Boston since 1990. Dougan, “the son of an
Illinois railway dispatcher,” was a gradu-
ate of the University of Chicago.
In 2005, Credit Suisse Group decided
to drop the “First Boston” name from
its investment banking division in the
United States and Canada starting in
2006. According to The Tennessean, the
name change accompanied “the reorga-
nization of different Credit Suisse opera-
tions into ‘one bank.’” Credit Suisse
Group announced, “It makes sense from
the perspective of both our clients and
our employees to move to a single brand
to represent the fully integrated global
bank.” With that change, the name of First
Boston was lost to history.
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 Uni-
versity, she is the author of Gentlemen
Bankers: The World of J.P. Morgan
(Harvard University Press), a Trustee of
the Business History Conference, co-chair
of the Columbia University Economic
History Seminar and a member of the
editorial advisory board of the Business
History Review. She is also a member
of the Financial History editorial board.
About Where Are They Now? The “Where
Are They Now?” Series traces the origins
and histories of 207 of the underwriters of
the 1956 Ford Motor Company IPO. The
research for this series has been generously
funded by Charles Royce of The Royce
Funds. The Museum’s “Where Are They
Now?” blog can be found at: wherearethey-
nowblog.blogspot.com.
www.MoAF.org | Fall 2019 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 33