Historical Thought for the Day
February 26, 2010
Thought for the day:
You have to do some good with the money. Otherwise it'll come right back and bite you.
–$66 million lottery winner Mary Sanderson, in People, May 17, 1999.
This day in financial history:
1555: The company typically considered the world's earliest modern corporation is chartered in London, England. Its 201 shareholders, led by explorer Sebastian Cabot, put up 6,000 pounds in shares priced at 25 pounds each. They call the company the "Marchants adventurers of England, for the discovery of lands, territories, iles, dominions, and seigniories unknowen, and not before that late adventure or enterprise by sea or navigation, commonly frequented." Understandably, this "busynes" soon goes by a shorter handle, the Muscovy Company or the Russia Company.
1987: Templeton Emerging Markets Fund, the first portfolio of emerging markets stocks for retail investors, is launched.
1995: Barings Bank, one of the oldest and most distinguished investment banks in the world, declares bankruptcy after rogue trader Nick Leeson loses more than $1.4 billion on unauthorized (and apparently unsupervised) trades in Japanese stock futures. The ultimate irony: Barings had nearly gone bust more than a century earlier on its speculations in Latin American bonds. Some people never learn.
Source: Jason Zweig
