Company type | Partnership |
---|---|
Industry | Investment banking Commercial banking Private equity Wealth management Merger and acquisitions |
Founded | New York City, US (January 1, 1931 ) (merger of Brown Bros. & Co. (1818), Harriman Brothers & Company (1927) and W. A. Harriman & Co. (1922)) |
Headquarters | 140 Broadway New York City |
Revenue | $1.3 billion |
Total assets | US$ 55 billion (2020) [1] |
Number of employees | 5,701 (2020) [2] |
Website | www |
Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. (BBH) is the oldest and one of the largest private investment banks in the United States. [3] [4] In 1931, the merger of Brown Brothers & Co. (founded in 1818) and Harriman Brothers & Co. formed the current BBH.
Brown Brothers Harriman is also notable for the number of influential American politicians, government appointees, and Cabinet members who have worked at the company, such as W. Averell Harriman, Prescott Bush, Robert A. Lovett, Richard W. Fisher, Robert Roosa, and Alan Greenspan. [5]
Brown Brothers Harriman provides advisory, wealth management, commercial banking, and investor services for corporate institutions and high-net-worth individual clients. Alongside the aforementioned services, the firm provides global custody, foreign exchange, private equity, merger and acquisitions, investment management for individuals and institutions, personal trust and estate administration, and securities brokerage services. Organized as a partnership, BBH has approximately 6,000 staff in 18 offices throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Currently, the firm has 38 partners, [6] and acts as custodian and administrator for $3.3 trillion and $1.2 trillion in assets, respectively. [2] [7]
After immigrating to Baltimore in 1800 and building a successful linen mercantile trading business, [3] [4] [8] Alexander Brown and his four sons co-founded Alex. Brown & Sons. [9] [10] In 1818, one son, John Alexander Brown, traveled to Philadelphia to establish John A. Brown and Co. [11] In 1825, another son, James Brown, established Brown Brothers & Co. [12] on Pine Street in Lower Manhattan and relocated to Wall Street in 1833. [3] This firm eventually acquired all other Brown branches in the U.S. [12] Another son, William Brown, had established William Brown & Co. in England in 1810, which was renamed Brown, Shipley & Co. in 1839 and became a separate entity in 1918. [8] [9] [12]
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.
On January 2, 1931, Brown Brothers & Co. merged with two other business entities, Harriman Brothers & Company, a private bank [13] started with railway money, and W. A. Harriman & Co. to form Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. Founding partners included: [14]
Time 's December 22, 1930, issue announced that the three-way merger featured 11 Yale graduates among 16 founding partners. [15] Eight of the partners listed above, except for Moreau Delano and Thatcher Brown, were Skull and Bones members. [16]
In 1930s the company acted as a U.S. base for the German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Adolf Hitler. [17]
After the passage of the Glass-Steagall Act, the partners decided to focus on commercial banking, becoming a private bank, and to spin its securities marketing and underwriting off into Harriman, Ripley and Company which eventually evolved into Drexel Burnham Lambert via mergers.
W. Averell Harriman, the founding partner in the firm left to go into public service. He left the leadership of Brown Brothers Harriman to his younger brother E. Roland Harriman. W. Averell Harriman was the ambassador and statesman responsible for the relationship between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt during World War II. Some historical records of Brown Brothers Harriman and its precursor companies are housed in the manuscript collections at the New-York Historical Society.
Prescott Sheldon Bush Sr. was an American banker and Republican Party politician. After working as a Wall Street executive investment banker, he represented Connecticut in the United States Senate from 1952 to 1963.A member of the Bush family, he was the father of President George H. W. Bush, and the paternal grandfather of President George W. Bush and Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
Private banks are banks owned by either the individual or a general partner(s) with limited partner(s). Private banks are not incorporated. In any such case, creditors can look to both the "entirety of the bank's assets" as well as the entirety of the sole-proprietor's/general-partners' assets.
A merchant bank is historically a bank dealing in commercial loans and investment. In modern British usage, it is the same as an investment bank. Merchant banks were the first modern banks and evolved from medieval merchants who traded in commodities, particularly cloth merchants. Historically, merchant banks' purpose was to facilitate or finance the production and trade of commodities, hence the name "merchant". Few banks today restrict their activities to such a narrow scope.
Edward Roland Noel "Bunny" Harriman was an American financier and philanthropist.
George Herbert "Bert" Walker Sr. was an American banker and businessman. He was the maternal grandfather of the 41st United States President George H. W. Bush and a great-grandfather of President George W. Bush, both of whom were named in his honor. He was also the amateur heavyweight-boxing champion of Missouri while studying law at Washington University.
Kuhn, Loeb & Co. was an American multinational investment bank founded in 1867 by Abraham Kuhn and his brother-in-law Solomon Loeb. Headed from 1885 onwards by Jacob H. Schiff, Loeb's son-in-law, it grew to be one of the most influential investment banks in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, financing America's expanding railways and growth companies, including Western Union and Westinghouse, and thereby becoming the principal rival of J.P. Morgan & Co.
Brown Bros. & Co. was an investment bank from 1818 until its merger with Harriman Brothers & Company in 1931, to form Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. According to Zachary Karabell:
In its first hundred years, the firm helped to make paper currency standard in the U.S., underwrote the earliest railroad and trans-Atlantic steamship companies and almost unilaterally created the first foreign exchange system between the American dollar and the British pound. In the 20th century, it became a cornerstone of what came to be known as “the Establishment,” as its partners entered the halls of government to shape the global economic and security system that remains the world’s institutional architecture.
Brown Shipley is a member of Quintet Private Bank. It is headquartered in London's Moorgate, behind the Bank of England. Brown Shipley offers wealth planning, investment management and lending services for private, corporate and institutional clients. Effective January 2022, the CEO is Calum Brewster.
George Brown was an Irish-American investment banker and railroad entrepreneur.
Alex. Brown & Sons was the first investment bank in the United States, founded by Alexander Brown in 1800 in Baltimore, Maryland. The firm was acquired by Bankers Trust in 1997 to form BT Alex. Brown, and then integrated into Deutsche Bank in 1999 following Deutsche's acquisition of BT. In 2016, Raymond James acquired Deutsche's U.S. private client services unit, operating under the Alex. Brown brand.
Sir William Brown, 1st Baronet DL was a British merchant and banker, founder of the banking-house of Brown, Shipley & Co. and a Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1846 to 1859.
Zachary Karabell is the founder of the Progress Network at New America, president of River Twice Capital, an author, and a columnist. In 2003, the World Economic Forum designated him a "Global Leader for Tomorrow."
63 Wall Street, originally the Wall and Hanover Building, is a 37-story skyscraper on Wall Street in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. Built in 1929, it was designed by Delano & Aldrich as the headquarters of Brown Brothers & Co.
John Crosby Brown was a senior partner in the investment bank Brown Bros. & Co., founded by his family.
Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co. KG, commonly known as Berenberg Bank and also branded as simply Berenberg, is a multinational full-service private and merchant bank headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. It is considered the world's oldest merchant bank.
Walter Vincent Shipley II was the chairman and chief executive officer of Chase Manhattan Bank and, previous to that, the company with which it merged Chemical Bank. Shipley was named chief executive of Chemical in 1981 and held the position through 1999 and remained at the bank as chairman through January 2000, just prior to the bank's merger with J.P. Morgan & Co. During his 18-year tenure, Shipley oversaw Chemical's mergers with Texas Commerce Bank in 1987, Manufacturers Hanover in 1991 and Chase Manhattan Bank in 1996.
Roosevelt & Son was an American investment banking firm connected with the Roosevelt family for nearly two centuries. The firm was among the oldest banking houses on Wall Street. Many of the male members of the Roosevelt family worked for the firm in some capacity.
Elbridge Thomas Gerry, known as Ebby Gerry, was an American banker and polo player.
Harriman, Ripley and Company was an investment bank created by the partners of Brown Brothers Harriman after the passage of the Glass Steagall Act mandated firewalls between commercial banks and investment banks. Brown Brothers Harriman positioned itself into a private bank while Harriman Ripley engaged in the marketing and underwriting of securities. Employees were recruited primarily from Brown Brothers Harriman, and also from the National City Bank.
Alexander Brown, was an Irish merchant and banker. Beginning as a merchant trader, first of linen in Belfast, then of cotton and tobacco after migrating to Baltimore, Maryland, he later shifted his focus to financial services. He founded Alex. Brown & Sons, the oldest investment banking firm in the US, in 1800, and with his sons operated a network of banks in the US and England. He made his fortune from the transatlantic cotton trade, and was one of the first millionaires in the United States.