Biography
Early life
Douglas Alexander Warner III was born on June 9, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio, as the elder son to Douglas Alexander Warner Jr. and Eleanor (Wright) W. Warner. He has a brother, Gordon, and a sister, Marjorie. [1] Warner came from money, growing up in the high-toned suburb of Indian Hill in a family with local social standing. For example, Warner's father served as a trustee of the Cincinnati Music Hall Association and Art Museum and chaired the United Appeal one year. Warner's grandfather (and namesake) ran his own insurance firm and was active in local golfing circles. Grandmother Warner was the daughter of a wealthy Cincinnati entrepreneur named J. Stacey Hill, who was the president of a then-prominent thousand-room Cincinnati hotel named Hotel Gibson. [2]
In 1960 Warner's family shipped the 14-year-old Warner 500 miles away from his home in Ohio to The Hill School, a college-preparatory boarding school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania (it admitted only boys at the time); Warner's father had graduated from the same school in 1937. [3] While a student at The Hill, Warner played junior hockey 1960–61, junior varsity (JV) hockey 1961–62, and varsity hockey 1962–64. [3] Warner graduated from there in 1964, the same year as Academy Award-winning producer/director Oliver Stone.
Education and career
From The Hill School, Warner applied to Yale University, the same school attended by his father and uncle. [2] In 1964, Warner entered Yale University at the age of 18 as a pre-med student. [4] At age 18, Warner was of draft age but most likely held a 2-S (college deferment) Selective Service System classification as a student at Yale University. During his time at Yale, Warner became friends with the future President George W. Bush through then-Yale ice hockey player Roland W. Betts - now owner of the multimillion-dollar Chelsea Piers Sports & Entertainment Complex. [5] [6] This friendship would prove valuable as President-elect Bush later named Warner as a financial adviser to his transition team in 2000. [5] [7]
At the peak of the Vietnam war upheaval in the United States in May 1968, Warner graduated from Yale University with a B.A. degree and intended to go to Yale medical school after leaving Yale undergraduate. Without a college deferment, Warner most likely would have been classified as 1-A, that is to say, classified as available immediately for military service. For example, President Bush was classified as 1-A on Bush's graduation from Yale in May 1968 and was accepted into the Texas Air National Guard at the height of the ongoing Vietnam War.
With the Vietnam war and Yale medical school choices facing Warner, Warner looked to a third option based on advice from his father, an insurance man from Cincinnati, Ohio. Warner's father advised Warner to go into business to develop some "breadth" [8] and subsequently Warner entered the management training program at Morgan Guaranty Trust Company in New York City. [9] At that time, Morgan Guaranty Trust Company was a wholly owned subsidiary of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (formerly J.P. Morgan & Co. Incorporated). Over the next seven years, Warner rapidly advanced from officer's assistant (1968–1970), through assistant treasurer (1970–1972) and assistant Vice President (1972–1975), to vice president in 1975. [1]
On May 13, 1977, Warner married Patricia G. Grant with whom he had four children, Alexander, Katherine, Michael, and Alice (deceased), and now, along with Patricia's brother Thomas, are residents of Locust Valley, N.Y. [10] [11]
In 1983, at age 37, Warner was transferred to London, England and was named Senior Vice President. [12] First, Warner was in charge of United Kingdom and Scandinavian banking operations and then became the head of oil and gas lending for the region. [8] In becoming the general manager of the London office and Morgan's senior executive in the United Kingdom in 1986, Warner received extensive experience in U.S. and international corporate finance. [1]
In 1987, Warner was promoted to Executive Vice President and returned to New York city to take charge of North American and South American corporate finance and, later that year, of the entire group worldwide. [1] [13]
In 1989, Warner became managing director of the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company and elected president and a director in 1990. [14] After rising through the ranks in various positions in London and New York City, Warner succeeded Dennis Weatherstone in 1995 as Morgan's youngest CEO ever at age 49. [4] [13] From 1995 to 2000, Warner served as chairman and chief executive officer. In 1999, Warner was ranked 14th of the "25 Highest Paid Banking Executives in 1999" with a total compensation for the year of US$9,916,151. [15] In 2000, Warner was mentioned as a possible candidate for President Bush's Treasury secretary along with Enron head Kenneth Lay and a few others. [16] However, Warner was elevated to chairman of the board of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Chase Manhattan Bank and Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York, NY in 2000 and served there until his retirement on September 7, 2001. [14] Instead, Bush named Warner as a financial adviser to his presidential transition team in 2000. [5]
2000 merger and retirement
Warner may be best known for spearheading the sale of J P Morgan & Co. to Chase Manhattan Bank through its then CEO William Harrison for $30.9 billion. [17]
In retirement, Warner is a director of Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc. and Motorola, Inc., a member of the Board of Counselors of The Bechtel Group, Inc., chairman of the Board of Managers and the Board of Overseers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, served as the Chair of the General Electric Audit committee, and served on both the General Electric Nominating committee and Corporate Governance and Management Development and Compensation committee. [14] In 2016 Warner was removed from his 24 year position on GE's board by CEO Jeff Immelt after the two disagreed about Immelt's succession plans. Warner appealed this move, but the board declined to bring him back. [18] Warner is a member of the Business Council, a trustee of the Pierpont Morgan Library, and a member of the committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy (CECP). [19] In between such retirement, Warner enjoys golf, skiing, and shooting as a member of Seminole Golf Club Seminole Golf Club, Links Club, River Club, Meadowbrook Club (Long Island, New York), Augusta National Golf Club, and Wequetonsing Golf Club(Harbor Springs, MI). [1] [20]
Warner was recently selected for a coveted six-year term on the Yale Corporation, Yale University’s governing body.
John Pierpont Morgan was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age. As the head of the banking firm that ultimately became known as J.P. Morgan and Co., he was the driving force behind the wave of industrial consolidation in the United States spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an American multinational financial services firm headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. It is the largest bank in the United States and the world's largest bank by market capitalization as of 2023. As the largest of Big Four banks, the firm is considered systemically important by the Financial Stability Board. Its size and scale have often led to enhanced regulatory oversight as well as the maintenance of an internal "Fortress Balance Sheet" of capital reserves. The firm is headquartered at 383 Madison Avenue in Midtown Manhattan and is set to move into the under-construction JPMorgan Chase Building at 270 Park Avenue in 2025.
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J.P. Morgan & Co. is an American financial institution specialized in investment banking, asset management and private banking founded by financier J. P. Morgan in 1871. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, the company is now a subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase, one of the largest banking institutions in the world. The company has been historically referred to as the "House of Morgan" or simply Morgan. For 146 years, until 2000, J.P. Morgan specialized in commercial banking, before a merger with Chase Manhattan Bank led to the business line spinning off under the Chase brand.
John Pierpont Morgan Jr. was an American banker, finance executive, and philanthropist. He inherited the family fortune and took over the business interests including J.P. Morgan & Co. after his father J. P. Morgan died in 1913.
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