Albert M. Greenfield - Early Life and Business Activities

Early Life and Business Activities

Greenfield, born Avrahm Gruenfeld in 1887 in Kiev, Ukraine, emigrated to the United States along with his parents and family in 1892, settling in Philadelphia and attending school there. Leaving school at age 15 to become a clerk for a prominent local real estate lawyer, he rapidly gained interest in, and knowledge of, the real estate business. Just two years later, in May 1905, Greenfield opened his own real estate firm, Albert M. Greenfield & Co., at 218 South 4th Street, with $500 that his mother borrowed for him from her brother. The money was rapidly repaid, as Greenfield was earning $60,000 a year by age 23; by 1917, his personal wealth had increased to $15 million. The alliances created through his growing real estate business led to investments in motion picture theaters, building and loan associations, and mortgage financing.

By the early 1920s he controlled 27 building and loan associations. In 1924, Greenfield and his father-in-law Sol C. Kraus formed Bankers Bond & Mortgage Company to handle first mortgages on real estate in Philadelphia. After expanding to the New York City market, the firm was renamed Bankers Bond & Mortgage Company of America. From 1925, until its closing on December 22, 1930 as a result of the crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression, he ran the Bankers Trust Company of Philadelphia. In 1927, Greenfield formed the Bankers Securities Corporation (BSC) for general investment banking and trading in securities, serving as its chairman until March 1959. It eventually became the parent company for virtually all of Greenfield's financial interests, including City Stores Company.

In common with many investors during the Depression, Greenfield was financially wiped out. Worse was to come; after Bankers Trust went under, he took another hit when City Stores was declared insolvent in 1931. However, after Greenfield himself took over the chairmanship of City Stores upon bankruptcy, CSCo realized a profit of $32 million in his first year at its helm, and he never looked back as the company expanded throughout the East Coast over the next 20 years, earning profits in the hundreds of millions of dollars. When asked much later about his negative experiences during the Depression, Greenfield replied, "It wasn't too bad. I've always treated both success and failure as imposters. I like making money, but I can get along without it. I never worried about having it because I knew I could always make more."