The New York Stock Exchange held its first-ever Columbus Day tribute Monday morning with a reception that includes some of the great Italian-American financiers of my era.
On The Money was fortunate enough to rating an invite to the occasion — which included the visitors of honor ringing the opening bell — and not just to have fun the ethnic pleasure of your humble correspondent. I also discovered something invaluable about the Italian-American expertise that the fake controversy over the explorer’s alleged misdeeds obfuscates.
That reminder came through loud and clear during a non-public reception and some opening remarks by Frank Bisignano, a long-time Wall Street heavyweight who is now working for the Trump administration as head of the Social Security Administration and the IRS.
Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano rings the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Monday as the NYSE honors Columbus Day and Italian American heritage. John Angelillo/UPI/Shutterstock
Bisignano — himself from an Italian immigrant household in Brooklyn — was the occasion’s organizer. He’s had fairly a profession on Wall Street, working at main banks Citigroup and JPM, then bringing tech corporations public. He now finds himself at the prime of authorities because of his financial acumen.
But as Bisignano defined, up until comparatively not too long ago, Italian Americans were shunted to the lowest confines of Wall Street — the so-called back workplace where trades and offers were processed.
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Even those who went to school weren’t expected to do much more than graduate to being flooring brokers at the NYSE. After all, this was a race stereotyped as organ grinders and mobsters. Who would trust them handling the public’s money?
Through grit and intelligence, Italian Americans persevered, or as Bisignano put it: “They put us in the back and somehow we got to the front.”
Who put us at the entrance? Bisignano then pointed to the crowd, and a group of males he called the “1927 Yankees of Wall Street” who defied the stereotypes and grew to become business leaders and much more.
That would embrace Dick Grasso, the former head of the Big Board, who made an look after a long absence from the establishment he ran, and thank God he did.
Grasso in many methods created the fashionable NYSE and epitomizes the Italian-American expertise on Wall Street. He came from humble beginnings, grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens, and was raised by a single mom. He flunked the eye check to become a NYPD cop, took a back-office job at the NYSE and rose to the prime of the group.
During his long tenure as its chief, Grasso constructed the NYSE into one of the great American manufacturers, where a stock itemizing to commerce on its platform conferred on the company the highest accolade of company America.
Also in attendance was Vincent Viola, another working-class child. “Vinny,” as his associates call him, came from Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s Italian enclave before the outdated neighborhood was recognized for its hipster vibe. His dad was a truck driver while Viola labored his approach to West Point, then the army in the one hundred and first Airborne. That was adopted by law faculty and a profitable profession as a commodities trader.
Former NYSE boss Dick Grasso, proven in August 2007, was also honored at the exchange on Monday. Paul Martinka
He didn’t stop there. Eventually, he ran the New York Mercantile Exchange, and that was all before beginning the venerable high-speed trading firm, Virtu Financial and then shopping for the Florida Panther hockey workforce.
Hitting cleanup in Bisignano’s model of the Yankees Murderers’ Row was Ken Langone. There’s not enough space in this column to chronicle all of Langone’s achievements. At 91, Langone still likes to refer to himself as a “kid from Roslyn Heights,” the working-class enclave on Long Island where he grew up. His dad was a plumber, and while the household eked out a working-class existence, Langone labored odd jobs from an early age — even construction in his teenagers.
He went to school, earned an MBA and in the Sixties broke into Wall Street as a stock analyst at a place called R.W. Pressprich & Co. Langone grew to become a legend when he elbowed his well past bankers at white shoe corporations to become the emerge as the lead underwriter of the period’s greatest IPO for tech pioneer Ross Perot’s Electronic Data Systems in 1968.
That would wrap up a profession for most people, but Langone didn’t stop there. He began his own firm, Ivemed, and partnered with the late Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank to create another great American company success story, the Home Depot Corp. Langone is still as sharp as ever and now dedicates most of his time to philanthropy, including a first-class hospital system he helped create, NYU’s Langone’s Medical Center, along with NYU’s Langone MBA program.
Full disclosure: I am a recipient of wonderful care at NYU Langone, and my spouse is a graduate of the Langone MBA program.
I thank Ken for both whenever I see him, including at Monday’s occasion. I also thanked him and the relaxation of the lineup for making Italian Americans proud.
