Kuhn, Loeb & Co. - History

History

Kuhn, Loeb & Co. was an investment bank located in New York City. It was founded in 1867, by Abraham Kuhn and Solomon Loeb. Kuhn and Loeb had created a successful merchandising business in Cincinnati, Ohio, when they decided to move east, to New York, to take advantage of the country's burgeoning economic expansion. Company records indicate that by the time Kuhn and Loeb established their partnership, they were able to capitalize it at $500,000. On January 1, 1875, Jacob Schiff (1847-1920), Solomon Loeb's son-in-law, joined the firm and began a remarkable reign as its leader, during which it grew to be the second most prestigious investment bank in the United States, behind J. Pierpont Morgan's, J.P. Morgan & Co.

The firm grew to prominence during the railroad era in the United States. Much like the internet boom which struck America in the 1990s, Americans saw great hope and promise in the railroad era and investors saw great opportunities to profit. Kuhn, Loeb, like all investment banks, brought capital together with commercial opportunity. Its first meaningful entry into railroad financing was in 1877 when it raised funds for the Chicago and North Western Railroad, and several years later, in 1881, for the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad.

Schiff was instrumental in the reorganization of the Union Pacific in 1897, helping to place the firm on sound financial footing. In 1901, with Kuhn, Loeb's financial support, E. H. Harriman famously battled James Jerome Hill and J.P. Morgan to acquire control of the Northern Pacific Railroad.

The firm was long associated with many of America's emerging industrial giants, providing financial backing for Westinghouse and Western Union, as well as innovative consumer giants like the Polaroid Corporation. The firm also enjoyed respect as a trusted adviser overseas, providing services to numerous foreign governments, including the governments of Austria, Finland, Mexico and Venezuela.

It also acted as the leading investment house for John D. Rockefeller, through the guidance of his investment adviser, Frederick T. Gates. Rockefeller invested in many syndicates with the bank, including major stakes in the prominent railroad companies, as well as contributing to its consolidation of the Chicago meatpackers, which resulted in the formation of a leading trust. Overseas ventures that Rockefeller also got involved with included the bank's loans to the Chinese and Imperial Japanese governments.

The firm also joined a partnership with Rockefeller in 1911 to gain control of the Equitable Trust Company, which was later to merge and become the Chase Bank.

Famous partners of the firm included Otto Kahn, Paul Warburg, Felix Warburg, Mortimer Schiff, Benjamin Buttenwieser, Lewis Strauss, Sigmund Warburg, founder of S.G. Warburg.

In its early years, intermarriage among the German-Jewish elite was common. Consequently, the partners of Kuhn, Loeb were closely related by blood and marriage to the partners of J & W Seligman, Speyer & Co., Goldman, Sachs & Co., Lehman Brothers and other prominent German-Jewish firms. Prior to the Second World War, a particularly close relationship existed between the partners of Kuhn, Loeb and M. M. Warburg & Co. of Hamburg, Germany, through Paul and Felix, who were Kuhn, Loeb partners. Later on, following World War II, their cousin Sigmund Warburg, would briefly continue this relationship as a partner and Executive Director of the firm.

The firm's fortunes began to fade in the years following World War II. Wall Street was changing and shifting away from relationship banking. Kuhn, Loeb's world of gentlemen bankers was gradually being replaced by a more aggressive, transaction-oriented Wall Street, with underwriters entering the trenches and selling securities directly to the public, territory Kuhn, Loeb stubbornly refused to enter. When asked how many people worked at Kuhn, Loeb, one partner famously quipped, "about half". Such was life at Kuhn, Loeb, resting on its laurels, while Wall Street passed it by.

In 1977, facing a capital crisis, the firm succumbed and merged with Lehman Brothers, to form Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb Inc. Internationally, the merged firms were known as Kuhn Loeb Lehman Brothers Inc., in recognition of the fact that Kuhn Loeb's international reputation was superior to that of Lehman's.

The merger did not, however, prove to be the panacea to what ailed Kuhn, Loeb. Indeed, as detailed more closely in the Lehman Brothers history, a period of bitter internal strife ended in 1984 when the firm sold itself to Shearson/American Express, itself the product of a recent merger between American Express and Sandy Weill's, Shearson Loeb Rhoades. The combined firms then dropped the Kuhn, Loeb name and became known as Shearson Lehman/American Express, ending Kuhn, Loeb's almost 120 years on Wall Street.

Later, the combined firm purchased disgraced E.F. Hutton, becoming Shearson Lehman Hutton. Ultimately, however, American Express could not make the pieces of its financial services supermarket work and the firm sold its retail brokerage operations to Primerica in 1993 and in 1994 spun off a beleaguered Lehman Brothers as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., in an initial public offering.

Although the Kuhn, Loeb name is likely lost forever, the firm's legacy is not. Former Kuhn, Loeb employees remain in senior positions throughout Wall Street and until recently, at Lehman Brothers. Vestiges of the firm survived in the form of Lehman Brothers' extensive fixed income capabilities, including many of their bond indices, such as the Government/Credit index. This index, originally birthed in 1973 by Kuhn, Loeb, as the Government/Corporate index was among the first generation of bond index data to measure the fixed income market. It is still the preeminent benchmark in its class.