did you know that Lehman Brothers started out in Alabama?

[Syrinx]

Lehman Brothers started out as a grocery store/cotton merchant in Montgomery in 1844, founded by Jewish, German immigrants. It eventually evolved into one the largest investment banks in the country. It took the ultimate collapse of the company for me to become aware of its roots.

Ben Stein said on Larry King that Hank Paulson really screwed the pooch when he allowed Lehman to collapse. I can't say if that's true or not, because the only "F" I ever got in college was in economics. I never could really grasp the subject; it seemed liked voodoo to me. I thought economics should really be taught in the philosophy department, not the business school. Oh well.

I just thought it was kind of interesting.

As Lehman Brothers fades to black, a detail buried deep in the company's past all but escapes attention: The nation's fourth-largest investment bank got its start in Montgomery nearly 160 years ago as a grocer and cotton merchant.

"It started right here," said Mary Ann Neeley, a Montgomery historian and volunteer with the Montgomery Landmarks Foundation. "They started taking cotton as payment for goods, then decided cotton itself was probably a better business. They did right well with it."

The founders were the three German immigrant Lehman brothers - Henry, Emanuel and Mayer. It started in 1844 when Henry left Rimpar, Germany, part of an exodus of Jews seeking to escape laws restricting their occupations, property holdings and family life. He settled in Montgomery and sold goods of all varieties to plantation owners from a traveling wagon.

By 1850, the other two brothers joined Lehman in Montgomery, and they began accepting raw cotton as payment for farm supplies. That led to warehousing, which led to trading, which eventually led to completely getting out of the physical commodity business in favor of one that turned out to be much more profitable and far less cumbersome: brokering deals between cotton planters and cotton users.

http://www.al.com/business/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/business/1221552904282610.xml&coll=2

[Syrinx]

1. yeah, "eventually evolve" is redundant n/t

[Frances]

2. Thanks for posting this info