Almerindo Portfolio

Last updated
Almerindo Portfolio
Born(1878-05-23)23 May 1878
Schiavi di Abruzzo, Italy
Died23 January 1966(1966-01-23) (aged 87)
Gabriels, New York, USA
OccupationsBusinessman, New York City Treasurer
Children2 daughters

Almerindo Portfolio (23 May 1878 – 23 January 1966) was an Italian-born American banker and financier. He was treasurer of New York City under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. [1] He was an immigrant from Schiavi di Abruzzo, Italy in 1888. [2] In 1908 he legally changed his name from Almerindo Porfilio. [3]

Contents

Portfolio rose from a $2-a-week messenger to the presidency of the Bank of Sicily in New York and the head of a cloak & suit company, that in 1924 he gifted to six employees. [4] He also worked as a newspaper publisher, commodity trader, and investment banker.

Between 1917 and 1919 he paid 300,000 Lira ($2 million in 2025 US dollars [5] ) to install the first electric service in his home town of Schiavi di Abruzzo, Italy. He later gave 50,000 Lira ($370,000 in 2025 US dollars [6] ) for the town's water utilities. [7]

In 1940 Portfolio was a delegate to the Republican National Convention. [8] In 1945 he was a member of a joint committee of influential Italian Americans promoting Allied status for Italy in World War II. [9]

Portfolio died on January 25, 1966, at the age of 88, in Gabriels, in upstate New York, at a tuberculosis cure facility. [1]

Portfolio’s brother in law and biographer was diplomat Paolo Alberto Rossi.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Almerindo Portfolio, 88, Dead; City Treasurer for La Guardia; Immigrant Built Fortune, Then Gave Business to Workers Headed Bank, www.nytimes.com, January 25, 1966
  2. ↑ Porfilio Surname : Italian Immigration to America, www.lookupthe.name, on the ship SS Letimbro
  3. ↑ Laws of the State of New York, Volume 2, By New York (State), 1909, Google Books
  4. ↑ Radio: Cause, Jul. 10, 1939, www.time.com
  5. ↑ Assuming that 300,000 lira in 1918 was equivalent to $47,600, based on a 6.3 lira per dollar exchange rate as reported by The Crisis of Liberal Italy By Douglas J. Forsyth, page 205, at a time when the average family annual income was $1,518 as reported by Economic and demographic indicators, United States, 1918–19 Archived April 16, 2016, at the Wayback Machine , so the sum was 41 times average family annual income, and given that 2006 median family income was $48,800.
  6. ↑ Ibid, 5.2 times average family annual income.
  7. ↑ Schiavi di Abruzzo, Documenti e Storia, edited by L. Porfilio and P. Falasca, Marino Solfanelli Publishers, 1994, ISBN   88-7497-621-6., Page 232.
  8. ↑ New York Delegation to the 1940 Republican National Convention, www.politicalgraveyard.com
  9. ↑ ITALIAN-AMERICANS ORGANIZE TO DEMAND ALLIED STATUS FOR ITALY, CIA Document, www.faqs.org, 4/6/1945
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.