Where Are
They Now?
The Syndicate
of the Ford
Motor Company
Initial Public
Offering of 1956
By Susie J. Pak
In the mid-20th century, there were
hundreds of investment banks and bro-
kerages houses across the United States.
Starting in the 1960s, these firms began
to disappear. This change has not gone
unnoticed, particularly by members of the
financial community, who experienced
this change in their own lifetimes. In 2012,
when Barron’s published an article titled
“Where Have You Gone, Blyth Eastman
Dillon Paine Webber Kidder Peabody?,”
its sentiments echoed those of many, who
felt as though they had lived through a
“Darwinian evolution” of sorts.
Barron’s point of reference for this
change was the fate of the syndicate that
underwrote the Ford Motor Company’s
historic initial public offering (IPO) in
1956 — a group of 205 top banks from the
United States and Canada led by Gold-
man Sachs, whose senior partner, Sidney
J. Weinberg, was the driving force behind
the Ford deal. As the largest common
stock IPO in American history until that
time, the Ford IPO established Goldman
Sachs’s reputation as a leading investment
bank. In her biography of the firm, Lisa
Endlich writes that Goldman partner John
Whitehead, who assisted Weinberg on the
deal, proudly displayed the Ford tomb-
stone in his office, framed but without
glass. Over time, Whitehead also noticed
the change in his community. As the ranks
thinned, Endlich writes, he crossed names
off the list with a red pen.
Tombstone advertisement for the Ford Motor
Company IPO, which was originally printed in
The Wall Street Journal on January 18, 1956.
12 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Fall 2017 | www.MoAF.org