Just days before his death at age 86, Alan “Ace” Greenberg was still coming into his office at JPMorgan Chase to manage money.
Greenberg, who helped turn Bear Stearns into a Wall Street behemoth and later oversaw its fall into bankruptcy, continued to work after the firm he spent 59 years building was taken over during the financial crisis and its name stripped from the door.
“It’s hard to imagine a financial services industry without Ace,” JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and head of asset management Mary Erdoes said in an internal memo on Friday.
“Whether he was building Bear Stearns into an industry powerhouse or wowing the trading floor with his penchant for magic, Ace’s personality permeated everything he did.”
Greenberg started as a clerk at Bear Stearns before making a name for himself as a stock trader, eventually rising to the top. He spent 59 years at Bear Stearns and nearly 15 of those as CEO, starting in 1979.
After Bear Stearns collapsed from toxic subprime mortgages and was sold to JPMorgan, Greenberg stayed on as vice chairman emeritus and continued to make money for the bank.
On and off the trading floor, he was quirky, especially by buttoned-up Wall Street standards.
An amateur magician, he performed card tricks for colleagues.
He also donated $1 million to help poor, impotent men afford Viagra, saying it “will give a lot of pleasure to a lot of people.”
In 1984, he was knighted by the Queen of Denmark for his scholarship fund for Scandinavian students.