Ford
Weinberg’s position on the War Production Board helped him to forge close personal relationships with many of America’s top young businessmen. When the war ended, many of these executives hired Weinberg as their investment banker, thereby boosting the prestige of Goldman Sachs’ client engagements. Many executives invited Weinberg to join their own companies’ boards. Weinberg served on the boards of many of America’s leading blue chip companies, including those of Ford Motor Company, General Electric, Sears Roebuck, Continental Can, National Dairy Products Corporation, B.F. Goodrich Company, and General Foods Corporation.
Perhaps Weinberg’s most important relationship from the War Production Board was with Henry Ford II, the eldest grandson of Henry Ford I. Following the death of his father Edsel Ford in 1943, Henry Ford II soon became president of Ford Motor Company – at that time America’s largest private corporation. While enormous, Ford Motor Company faced considerable financial and strategic challenges transitioning from military manufacturing to a peacetime economy. Weinberg helped Ford to recruit a group of new executives including Ernie Breech and Theodore O. Yntema to revitalize the struggling automobile company. In return for Weinberg’s advice, Ford chose Weinberg to lead the underwriting syndicate for Ford Motor Company’s 1956 initial public offering. The Ford IPO was the largest the United States had ever seen, raising nearly seven hundred million dollars (roughly five billion dollars in today’s terms), and considerably promoting Goldman Sachs’ position on Wall Street as a top investment bank.
Read more about this topic: Sidney Weinberg
Famous quotes containing the word ford:
“We bring [to government] no hereditary status or gift of infallibility and none follows us from this place.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“Obviously, it’s a great privilege and pleasure to be here at the Yale Law School Sesquicentennial Convocation. And I defy anyone to say that and chew gum at the same time.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“I have always felt that the real purpose of government is to enhance the lives of people and that a leader can best do that by restraining government in most cases instead of enlarging it at every opportunity.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)