United States v. Morgan (1953)

Not to be confused with United States v. Morgan, 346 US 502 (1954), a United States Supreme Court case; see United States v. Morgan (1954).

United States v. Morgan, 118 F. Supp. 621 (S.D.N.Y. 1953), more commonly referred to as the Investment Bankers Case was a multi-year antitrust case brought by the United States Justice Department against seventeen of the most prominent Wall Street investment banking firms, known as the Wall Street Seventeen.^[1][2][3]

United States v. Morgan
Court	United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
Full case name	United States v. Morgan et al.
Decided	October 14, 1953
Defendant	17 defendants (see list in article)
Plaintiff	United States of America
Citation	118 F. Supp. 621 (S.D.N.Y. 1953)
Court membership
Judge sitting	Harold Medina
Keywords
Investment Bankers Case

The Justice Department filed suit against the firms in 1947, claiming that the leading investment banking firms had combined, conspired and agreed, in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, to control and monopolize the U.S. Securities markets.

The 17 Wall Street firms named as defendants in the case, later known as the "Wall Street Seventeen" were:^[1][4]

1. Morgan Stanley & Co.
2. Kidder Peabody
3. Goldman Sachs
4. White Weld & Co.
5. Dillon Read & Co.
6. Drexel & Co.
7. First Boston Corporation
8. Smith Barney & Co.
9. Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
10. Lehman Brothers
11. Blyth & Co.
12. Eastman Dillon & Co.^[5]
13. Harriman Ripley
14. Stone & Webster Securities Corp.
15. Harris, Hall & Co.
16. Glore, Forgan & Co.
17. Union Securities Corp.

Excluded from the case were other prominent Wall Street firms including Bache & Co., Halsey Stuart & Co., Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane and Salomon Brothers & Hutzler.

Judgment

The case, which was brought to trial in the Southern District of New York in 1952, was presided over by the controversial and politically conservative Federal judge Harold Medina, who had become internationally infamous for his rulings in the 1949 Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders.^[6] In October 1953, after a year-long trial, Medina found in favor of the investment banking firms. In his judgment, he saw "a constantly changing panorama of competition among the seventeen defendant firms."

See also

• Pujo Committee
• Pecora Commission