Morgan, J(ohn) P(ierpont) (1837–1913)

US financier and investment banker whose company (sometimes criticized as ‘the money trust’) became the most influential private banking house after the Civil War, being instrumental in the formation of many trusts which stifled competition. He set up the US Steel Corporation in 1901 and International Harvester in 1902.

They were powerful enough to bail out the Federal Reserve System 1895 and stabilized the economy after the crisis of 1907 when, in response to increasingly large US trust companies acting as banks under inadequate regulation, the Knickerbocker Trust Co. closed its doors to prevent a run on the firm 22 October 1907. Bailed out by Morgan and others, the panic was limited and its effects were not widespread.

Morgan was born in Hartford, Connecticut. He entered the bank of Duncan, Sherman and Company 1857, and in 1871 became a member of the firm of Drexel, later Morgan and Company. He had a vast collection of art treasures, much of which was left to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in his day was a symbol of financial power.