J.S. Morgan & Co.

was a merchant bankingfirm based in London and New

York Cityfounded by Junius S. Morgan, father of J. Pierpont Morgan. The
business had originally been started by the American merchant George
Peabody conducting business on his own account when he took up
residence in London in 1838. The business was formally incorporated
as George Peabody & Co. in 1851 and on Peabody's retirement in 1864
control was assumed by Morgan who had joined the firm as a partner
in 1854. As a consequence the firm was re-styled J. S. Morgan & Co..
[1] The firm's New York agency was later to become J.P. Morgan &
Co. (under the leadership of Junius' son J. Pierpont Morgan) a
predecessor firm of JPMorgan Chase.
J. S. Morgan & Co. came to real prominence in 1871 when they
undertook the issue of a French war loan during the Franco-Prussian
War.[2] On the death of Junius in 1890, Pierpont became the senior
partner of the London firm.[3] By 1910 all the firm's Morgan family
partners were resident in the US and to reflect this the London
partnership was restructured with J. P. Morgan & Co. in the US
assuming a 50% ownership of the London business which was
reconstituted as Morgan Grenfell & Co. in recognition of the senior
London-based partner, Edward Grenfell.[4]
J.P. Morgan & Co. is a commercial and investment banking institution
founded by J. P. Morgan in 1871. The company was a predecessor of
three of the largest banking institutions in the world, JPMorgan
Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank (via Morgan, Grenfell & Co.),
and was involved in the formation of Drexel Burnham Lambert. The
company is sometimes referred to as the "House of Morgan" or simply
"Morgan".

J.P. Morgan & Co.

Type Subsidiary

Industry Investment
banking, commercial
banking, asset
 management

Fate Merged with Chase

Manhattan Bank in 2000

Founded 1871; 148 years ago

Founder J. P. Morgan

Headquarters New York City, New York

United States

Number of 26,314 (2010)

employees

Parent JPMorgan Chase

Website www.jpmorgan.com

By the late 1990s, J.P. Morgan had emerged as a large but not dominant
commercial and investment banking franchise with an attractive brand name
and a strong presence in debt and equity securities underwriting. Beginning
in 1998, J.P. Morgan openly discussed the possibility of a merger, and
speculation of a pairing with banks such as Goldman Sachs, Chase
Manhattan Bank, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank AG was prevalent.
[7] Chase Manhattan had emerged as one of the largest and fastest growing
commercial banks in the United States through a series of mergers over the
previous decade. In 2000, Chase, which was looking for yet another
transformational merger to improve its position in investment banking,
merged with J.P. Morgan to form JPMorgan Chase & Co.[8][9] The combined
JPMorgan Chase would become one of the largest banks both in the United
States and globally offering a full complement of investment
banking, commercial banking, retail banking, asset management, private
banking and private equity businesses.