Albert H. Wiggin

Albert Henry Wiggin (February 21 1868–May 21 1951) was an American banker.

Born in the town of Medfield, Massachusetts, Albert Wiggin was the son of a Unitarian minister and a cousin of Arthur Francis Holme Wiggin CMG. At age seventeen, he went to work for a Boston bank and in 1892 he married Jessie Duncan Hayden with whom he had two daughters. By his early thirties, Wiggin was already a vice president at National Park Bank in New York City. He gained recognition as one of the up-and-coming in the Wall Street banking community for his role in organizing Bankers Trust. In 1904 the quiet, reserved Wiggin became the youngest ever vice president at the prestigious Chase National Bank and in 1911 succeeded Henry W. Cannon as president.

Under Albert Wiggin, Chase National Bank entered a period of rapid growth, spurred by the acquisition of several New York financial institutions and the creation of a securities division that made his bank second only to National City Bank. In 1917, Wiggin was made Chairman of the bank and served on the board of directors of more than fifty major American corporations. He was responsible for bringing in members of the Rockefeller family as investors in Chase National Bank.

Wiggin became an important player on the world financial stage and in 1923 opened a Chase National Bank representative office in London, England which began lending directly to governments and businesses throughout Europe. Wiggin was a staunch proponent of Free trade, albeit under certain restrictions. He was a signatory to the 1926 international round robin declaration by over 100 of the world's most powerful financiers that called upon European nations to remove their tariff barriers to international trade.

On Black Thursday of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Albert Wiggin joined with other senior Wall Street bankers in an attempt to save the collapsing stock market. On behalf of Chase National Bank, Wiggin, along with other bankers, committed substantial funds for an investment pool. They had Richard Whitney, vice president of the New York Stock Exchange, go onto the floor of the Exchange and with great fanfare purchase large blocks of shares in major U.S. corporations at prices above the current market. The action halted the slide that day and returned stability to the market. While the market slide continued on Monday, Wiggin was lauded as a hero for his actions. However, what came out in the Pecora Commission investigation into the Wall Street crash, was that beginning in September 1929, Wiggin had begun selling short shares in Chase National Bank. His short selling, done secretly through several companies owned by himself and family members, helped drive down his own bank's stock price and he made a multi-million dollar profit. Wiggin was not alone, other greedy executives in powerful positions did the same thing, and although not illegal, Wiggin eventually retired under pressure from the bank.

As head of one of America's most important banks, Wiggin was consulted by the Hoover Administration for suggestions on how to deal with the Great Depression. Wiggin opposed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 and according to the Ludwig von Mises Institute, "One of the best counsels on the depression was set forth in an annual report by Albert H. Wiggin, chairman of the board of the Chase National Bank, in January, 1931." However, the Institute noted that: "Wiggin's wise advice went unheeded."

Albert Wiggin retired from banking in December 1932. In his personal life, beginning in 1911 he started assembling a collection art prints, drawings, watercolors, and books. Among the French, British, and American works of art on paper that Wiggin acquired were prints by Henri Fantin-Latour, Francisco Goya, Honoré Daumier, George Bellows, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Thomas Rowlandson, Jean-Louis Forain, Alphonse Legros, and many others. In 1941 he donated his collection of several thousand pieces to the Boston Public Library. Other works from his assemblage can be found at the New York Public Library and the Baltimore Museum of Art. He was made a lifetime member of the board of MIT's "Charles Hayden Memorial Library."

For Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, he endowed the "Albert Henry Wiggin Memorial Scholarship Fund" plus he and his wife formed the "Albert H. and Jessie D. Wiggin Foundation" which gave grants to institutions such as the United Hospital Fund and the Department of Medicine at Columbia University.

Albert Wiggin died in 1951.

Personalities of Wall Street

See "List of personalities associated with Wall Street".