John D. Rockefeller: America and the World's First Billionaire
Few people can boast that their name has become a nickname. Just as few people know who and what kind of person the owners of impressive fortunes were actually named after. The Rockefellers.
John D. Rockefeller was born on July 8, 1839, in Richford, New York, and lived a very long life of 97 years, forcing the insurance company to shell out five million dollars with this record of longevity. Virtually never seeing his father engaged in various scams and machinations, little John did learn a commercial approach to life from him. By the age of 13, the enterprising child was already giving a familiar farmer a 50$ loan at 7.5% per annum, having passed before that the sale of turkeys and the digging of neighbors' potatoes.
John Rockefeller's First Capital
Before getting first tangible income, Rockefeller has been through a lot. He attended college and quickly dropped out, disillusioned with his studies; from an unpaid position as assistant accountant at Hewitt and Tuttle, he rose to manager, but left that post as well, resenting the low pay. Thereafter, the future billionaireHaving borrowed the missing capital from his father at interest, together with his partner they started selling food for the army during the Civil War. Rockefeller got rich on this speculation, got married, and soon began his ascent to financial Olympus.
Rockefeller's Financial Olympus
By 1890 To John Rockefeller, owner of Standard OilThe businessman was the owner of 95% of the U.S. oil market. To achieve this overwhelming monopoly, the enterprising businessman negotiated with railroad companies for considerable discounts on transportation, thus ruining competitors and buying them up for next to nothing. After the Sherman Antitrust Act came out and fraudulent investigations began, Rockefeller split Standard Oil into 34 corporations, in each of which he had a controlling shareholding. Very soon the oil tycoon entered the international market by cooperating with his main competitors: British Petroleum and Shell.
How to become a billionaire - Rockefeller's recipe
Stav the first billionaire in American and world history, Rockefeller The president was still a negative figure for many people, especially after the court proceedings. That is why we owe the appearance of PR to him, when in order to create the image of a loving and hardworking head of the family, the scandalous businessman hired a professional journalist, and he wrote apt series of articles in leading newspapers. The attitude of the society was also changed in the positive direction by the wide charity activity of the famous businessman, who created Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, Rockefeller University; he also sponsored the Baptist church, to which he belonged. It is estimated that the billionaire's donations during his lifetime totaled more than 500$ million.
To this day, John D. Rockefeller remains the richest man in the history of the planet. At the end of 2007, his fortune was estimated at $318$ billion, six times the amount of Bill Gates, for example. At the turn of the century, the odious businessman built a mighty oil empire, whose splinters such as Exxon and Standard Oil are still alive and thriving. In turn, the family of The Rockefellers is one of the most powerful in the world, owning major assets in the mining, transport, construction and banking sectors. It is only worth adding that the founder of the house ("doomed to become rich", in his own words), created his fabulous pyramid of wealth thanks to his iron and unwavering character, his elaborate machinations and hidden schemes, still in use today, and his quick and decisive actions at a critical moment.