John Pierpont Morgan was an American financier, banker and art collector who dominated corporate finance

Corporate finance

Corporate finance is the area of finance dealing with monetary decisions that business enterprises make and the tools and analysis used to make these decisions. The primary goal of corporate finance is to maximize shareholder value while managing the firm's financial risks...

 and industrial consolidation during his time. In 1892 Morgan arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Electric Company

Thomson-Houston Electric Company

The Thomson-Houston Electric Company was a manufacturing company which was one of the precursors of the General Electric Company.The Thomson-Houston Electric Company was formed in 1883 in the United States when a group of Lynn, Massachusetts investors led by Charles A...

 to form General Electric

General Electric

General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...

. After financing the creation of the Federal Steel Company he merged in 1901 with the Carnegie Steel Company

Carnegie Steel Company

Carnegie Steel Company was a steel producing company created by Andrew Carnegie to manage business at his steel mills in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area in the late 19th century.-Creation:...

 and several other steel and iron businesses, including Consolidated Steel and Wire Company owned by William Edenborn

William Edenborn

William Edenborn was a businessman, inventor and philanthropist, born in Altena in the Westphalia region of the Ruhr River Valley of the former Prussia, since Germany...

, to form the United States Steel Corporation.

Morgan died in Rome, Italy, in his sleep in 1913 at the age of 75, leaving his fortune and business to his son, John Pierpont "Jack" Morgan, Jr.

J. P. Morgan, Jr.

John Pierpont "Jack" Morgan, Jr. was an American banker and philanthropist.-Biography:He was born on September 7, 1867 in Irvington, New York to John Pierpont Morgan, Sr. and Frances Louisa Tracy. He graduated from Harvard in 1886, where he was a member of the Delphic Club, formerly known as the...

, and bequeathing his mansion and large book collections to The Morgan Library & Museum in New York.

At the height of Morgan's career during the early 1900s, he and his partners had financial investments in many large corporations and were accused by critics of controlling the nation's high finance.