| Type | Partnership |
|---|---|
| Industry | Investment Banking Commercial banking Private Equity Wealth Management |
| Founded | New York, New York, USA (January 1, 1931) (merger of Brown Bros. & Co. (1818) and Harriman Brothers & Company (1912)) |
| Headquarters | 140 Broadway New York City, New York |
| Employees | 4000+ (2008)[1] |
| Website | http://bbh.com |
Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. (BBH) is an American investment bank and securities firm, founded in 1818, it is the oldest and largest private bank in the United States. Brown Brothers Harriman serves clients globally in three main businesses: Investment Banking & Advisory, Wealth Management, Commercial Banking and Investor Services for corporate institutions and HNWI clients. In addition to its commercial banking facilities, the firm provides global custody, foreign exchange, private equity, merger and acquisition services, investment management for individuals and institutions, personal trust & estate administration, and securities brokerage [1]. Organized as a partnership, BBH has approximately 4,000 professionals in sixteen offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Currently, the firm has 40 partners and 4,000 staff globally with over a $2.8 trillion under management.[1]
The company was formed on January 1, 1931 by the merger of two banks, Brown Brothers & Co. and Harriman Brothers & Co.
Brown Brothers Harriman is particularly notable because of the large number of influential American politicians, government appointees, and central bankers who have worked at the company since its foundation: e.g., W. Averell Harriman, Prescott Bush, George Herbert Walker, Robert A. Lovett , Richard W. Fisher, Robert Roosa and Alan Greenspan.
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Brown Brothers Harriman and Company began nearly 200 years ago as an importer of linen. It then entered the banking business as a by-product of its success as a dry-goods merchant.[2]
The original Brown bank was founded in Philadelphia in 1818 and was called John A. Brown and Company. A New York branch was opened by a brother of John, James, and the overall business became known as Brown Brothers and Co. The New York office directed most of its efforts to trading with the British branch in Liverpool.[2]
Following the panic of 1837, Brown Brothers withdrew from most of its lending business. Two of the brothers, John and George, sold their shares in the company to the other two brothers, William and James. During the recovery from this economic turmoil, they chose to focus solely on currency exchange and international trade. During the panic of 1857, Brown Brothers was one of the few banks that did not close its doors, and actually supported several banks both in America and England.[2]
On January 1, 1931, Brown Brothers And Company merged with Harriman Brothers & Company, an investment company started in 1912 with railway money.
Its initial partners were:
When Time magazine announced this merger in its December 22, 1930 issue, they noted that of the company's 16 founding partners a total of 11 were graduates from Yale University. Eight of the ten initial partners (all except Moreau Delano and Thatcher Brown) were members of Skull and Bones.[3]
The resulting need for consensus among the partners has played a large part in the bank's conservative approach to doing business and led to a perception of Brown Brothers as a stuffy institution. Through the course of the 1990s, however, it has taken steps to dispel that notion. Brown Brothers is especially known for its personal banking services for wealthy customers, in particular "old money," from which many of the bank's partners also hail. In reality, this business represents just a third of the bank's money management activities, and more recently Brown Brothers has made efforts to attract the newly affluent, generally targeting individuals with at least $5 million in investable assets. It provides similar investment management services for private companies. Brown Brothers also engages in merger advisory activities as well as general commercial lending, a third of which is made to commodity import firm. A major source of the bank's profits is derived from administrating assets for foreign firms that need to maintain a large U.S. cash balance in order to buy and sell stocks on Wall Street. In addition to its longtime headquarters at 59 Wall Street and a site across the Hudson River in Jersey City, Brown Brothers maintains domestic offices in Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Palm Beach, and Philadelphia, as well as overseas branches in London, Dublin, Naples, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Zurich, Hong Kong, and Tokyo.
W. Averell Harriman, a partner in the firm, was the ambassador and statesman responsible for the relationship between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt during WWII.
In 2003, the company's headquarters moved from 59 Wall Street, which it had built and occupied since the 1920s, to the Marine Midland Building at 140 Broadway.
Some historical records of Brown Brothers Harriman and its precursor companies are housed in the manuscript collections at New-York Historical Society.
The firm has locations in the following sixteen cities around the world: