John Mortimer Schiff - Biography

Biography

Born into a Jewish-German banker family in New York, as son of Mortimer Loeb Schiff and grandson of Jacob H. Schiff, Schiff graduated from Yale University in 1925 then spent a year at Oxford University in England. He learned the banking business as an employee with Bankers Trust and for a time worked on the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Following the 1931 death of his father, he became a partner in the investment banking firm Kuhn, Loeb & Co.

John Schiff married Edith Baker, granddaughter of George Fisher Baker who was called "the richest, most powerful and most taciturn commercial banker in U. S. history" in a 1934 TIME magazine article. They had two sons, David T. and Peter G. Schiff.

From 1965 to 1976, Schiff served as a Trustee of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation then as Trustee Emeritus until his death in 1987.

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