J & W Seligman history

During the Grant administration (1869-77) Joseph Seligman was so important a financial figure that at one point he was offered the position of secretary of the treasury, which he declined.

In 1901, Albert and Frederick Strauss14 became the firm's first non-family managing partners, and under their management the firm:

In 1910 William Durant of the fledgling General Motors Corporation gave the Seligmans control of his company's board in return for underwriting $15 million worth of corporate notes.

J. & W. Seligman broke new ground in 1929 when it organized the Tri-Continental Corporation, a diversified closed-end investment company that remains the largest of its kind listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

1980: Seligman changes from a partnership to a corporate structure.

Morris, who succeeded Brown as chairman and chief executive officer of Seligman, invested in marketing the firm and added international equities to its roster of stock mutual funds. Its 30 or so funds included 19 in the stodgy field of tax-exempt municipal bonds, which Seligman first entered in 1983.

Nevertheless Seligman ranked only 128th among United States money managers in 1992 in terms of total assets under management.

1995: Seligman's technology mutual fund has become the largest of its kind in the United States.

Seligman, however, gained a bigger asset base ($2.7 billion in 1997) from which to draw management fees.

To better serve its clients Seligman introduced, in late 1998, a computer program that it distributed free to financial planners.