Wertheim & Co.

Wertheim & Co. was an investment firm founded in 1927 by Maurice Wertheim and Joseph Klingenstein, who met when they worked together at Hallgarten & Company. The firm engaged primarily in the merchant-banking business; it invested (in companies and real estate primarily for the benefit of its own partners and a small number of investment-advisory clients) from its formation until the deaths of Wertheim and one of his senior partners (Edwin Hilson) in 1950 and 1952 respectively.

After 1950, control of the firm passed to co-founder Joseph Klingenstein. He was a brilliant investor in stocks, and under his leadership the firm created one of the first professional research departments on Wall Street. In the mid-1950s the firm became more active in underwriting, and subsequently attained major-bracket status in both equity and debt securities.

Although its size and visibility did not keep pace with those of fellow major-bracket firms such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers, the firm expanded significantly in the early 1970s. Under the leadership of Klingenstein's son Fred, Wertheim & Co. expanded its services (research, sales, and trading) to institutional investors and increased its asset management business. As of 1970, the 20 partners and approximately 200 employees generated annual revenues of around $40 million (not including gains recorded in the personal accounts of partners and clients).

By 1986, when the Klingenstein family sold its 50% interest in the firm to Schroders, a British merchant bank, Wertheim had 38 managing directors, 51 associate managing directors, a total staff of almost 1,000, annual revenues over $200 million, five offices in the U.S. and three in Europe. The name of the firm was changed to Wertheim Schroder in 1986 after Schroder’s initial investment, and to Schroder Wertheim in 1994 after Schroder acquired the remaining 50% interest in the firm. In 2000 Schroders sold its global investment-banking operations (including Schroder Wertheim) to Salomon Smith Barney, a subsidiary of Citigroup.

Maurice Wertheim was born on February 16, 1886 to Jacob Wertheim and his wife, Hannah A. Morgenthau Wertheim. Jacob Wertheim was a founder of Wertheim & Schiffer (later Kerbs, Wertheim & Schiffer), one of several domestic cigar-manufacturing companies which were combined in 1902 to form the United Cigar Manufacturers Company, of which he became president. Jacob was also at one time director of the General Motors Corporation, a director of the Underwood Typewriter Company, and a director of several large real-estate concerns. He was also a founder of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies.