- Henry Baldwin Hyde
Henry Baldwin Hyde, (1834-1899), founded
The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States in 1859. It became, by the year of Hyde's death, the largest lifeinsurance company in the world.Hyde sought to guarantee that his son
James Hazen Hyde would continue the family’s control of the company after his death. James Hazen Hyde was twenty-three when he inherited the majority shares in the billion-dollar Equitable Life Assurance Society in 1899. Five years later, at the pinnacle of social and financial success, he made one fatal miscalculation, and set in motion the first greatWall Street scandal of the twentieth century.On the last night of January 1905,
James Hazen Hyde "(vice president of Equitable from 1899 to 1905)" gave one of the most fabulous costume balls of theGilded Age . Falsely accused through a mediasmear campaign initiated by board directorsE. H. Harriman ,Henry Clay Frick ,J.P. Morgan and company President James Waddell Alexander of charging the $200,000 party to his company. Hyde soon found himself drawn into a maelstrom of allegations of hiscorporate malfeasance . The shocking revelations almost caused a Wall Street panic, and resulted in an investigation of the entire insurance industry by the State ofNew York .Frick attempted to wheedle James Hazen Hyde's removal from the United States to France by seeking an appointment for him to become
United States Ambassador to France . Frick had engaged a similar stratagem when orchestrating the ouster ofJohn George Alexander Leishman from the presidency ofCarnegie Steel a decade beforehand. In that instance, Leishman had chosen to accepte the post as ambassador to Switzerland. Hyde, however, rebuffed Frick's plan. Hyde did, nonetheless, remove to France where he served as an ambulance driver during World War I and lived until the outbreak of World War II. Ironically, while in France, Hyde married Leishman's eldest daughter, Marthe.The Equitable Life Assurance Society was renamed AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company in September 2004, after it was purchased by the French financial giant
AXA .AXA Equitable is still one of the nation's premier providers of life insurance, annuities and other financial instruments.
References
After the Ball: "Gilded Age Secrets, Boardroom Betrayals, and the Party That Ignited the Great Wall Street Scandal of 1905"
Patricia Beard,Harper Collins 2004
ISBN 0-06-095892-8External links
* [http://www.broadchannel1.com/axa/book/chapter1.htm A biography]
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