Henry S. Ives

Who is Henry S. Ives?

Henry S. Ives was an American financier, speculator and stock manipulator, the "Napoleon of Finance," who caused a brief but spectacular Wall Street scandal in the 1880s.

Ives was born in Connecticut and arrived penniless in New York City as a young man. "Baby-faced, slight of build, and short", he rose from a salary of $10 per week, to controlling millions of dollars of property, within five years.

With partners George H. Stayner and Thomas C. Doremus, he founded the firm of Henry S. Ives and Company in 1886, while still in his 20s. The firm immediately began acquiring the stocks of railroad companies, inflating their stock prices, which provided additional borrowing leverage for more acquisitions, then raiding their corporate treasuries once they'd assumed control. He controlled the Mineral Range Railroad in Michigan, the Terre Haute and Indianapolis, and his largest conquest was the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railway in 1886.

In May 1887 the expulsion and later unexplained re-admission of Doremus as a member of the New York Stock Exchange caused a disruption in the NYSE's Board of Governors, including resignations within the governing committee.