Marcus Goldman

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Marcus Goldman (1821-1904) was a German-American businessman and entrepreneur. He was born in what is now Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1848. He was one of the original founders of Goldman Sachs, which today is one of the world's largest global investment banks.

[edit] Biography

Goldman came from a Jewish family, the son of a former schoolteacher and cattle dealer. He immigrated to the United States from Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1848 during the first great wave of Jewish immigration to America.

Upon arriving in America, he thrived as a peddler with a horse-drawn cart and later as a shopkeeper in Philadelphia. There Goldman met and married eighteen year old Bertha Goldman, who had also immigrated from Germany in 1848.

In 1869, with his wife and five children, Goldman relocated to New York City and hung out a shingle on Pine Street in lower Manhattan, with the legend Marcus Goldman & Co., setting himself up as a broker of IOUs.

From his earliest days of his business, Goldman was able to singlehandedly transact as much as $5 million worth of commercial paper a year. Successful though he was, Goldman's business was insignificant compared to that of the other Jewish-German bankers of the day. Concerns like Seligman's, with working capital of $6 million in 1869, were already modern day investment bankers immersed in underwriting and trading railroad bonds.

Goldman's youngest daughter, Louisa, married Samuel Sachs, the son of close friends and fellow Bavarian immigrants. Louisa's older sister and Sam's older brother had already married.

In 1882, Marcus Goldman invited his son-in-law Samuel to join him in the business and changed the firm's name to M. Goldman and Sachs. Business boomed - by 1880 the new firm was turning over $30 million worth of paper a year - and the firm's capital was now $100,000, all of it the senior partner's.

For almost fifty years after its inception, all of Goldman Sachs's partners were members of intermarried families. In 1885, Goldman took his own son Henry and his son-in-law Ludwig Dreyfuss into the business as junior partners and the firm adopted its present name, Goldman Sachs & Co. In 1894, Henry Sachs entered the firm, and in 1896 the firm joined the New York Stock Exchange.

When Marcus Goldman retired he left the firm in the hands of his son Henry and his son-in-law Samuel Sachs. In 1904 two of Sam Sachs's sons, Arthur and Paul joined the firm straight out of Harvard University.

In the summer of 1904, Marcus Goldman, died. From the most humble beginnings, the institution he left behind would soon become a full-service investment bank. With the advent of underwriting, coupled with the extensive lending, foreign exchange, and trading operations, the structure of Goldman Sachs was in place. Although much smaller and less sophisticated, it was already recognizable as the firm it would become.

[edit] See also

• Goldman Sachs
• List of German Jews

[edit] External links

• Goldman Sachs & Co