Goldman Sachs began with one man carrying merchants’ IOUs around Manhattan in his hat.
Marcus Goldman hung his shingle beside a coal chute on Pine Street in 1869. Mornings, he bought jewelers’ and tanners’ promissory notes at a discount and tucked them into the band of his silk hat. Afternoons, he sold them to uptown banks. A banker’s success each day, it was said, could be measured by the altitude of his hat.
Goldman Sachs on Brandseum