J. P. Morgan

J. P. Morgan (1837-1913) was an American financier who dominated corporate finance in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century, using his banking house, J.P. Morgan & Co., to reorganize and consolidate major railroads and industrial companies into stable, profitable combinations. He orchestrated the 1901 creation of the United States Steel Corporation, the first billion-dollar company in American history, by merging Andrew Carnegie's steel operations with several rivals, and he personally organized a coalition of bankers to supply emergency liquidity and avert a nationwide banking collapse during the Panic of 1907, a role no single private citizen would be positioned to fill again once the Federal Reserve System was created partly in response a few years later. His financial power and personal art collecting made him one of the most recognizable concentrations of private economic influence in the country's history.