The world's oldest billionaire, David Rockefeller, has died. The world's oldest billionaire, David Rockefeller, has died. Married to a fraudster.

USA

John Rockefeller, Jr.

Abby Eldritch Rockefeller

Margaret "Peggy" McGrath

David, Abby, Neva, Peggy, Richard, Eileen

Biography

Born in New York at 10 West 54th Street. In 1936 he graduated from Harvard University and studied for a year at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 1940, he defended his doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago, his dissertation was entitled “Unused Resources and Economic Waste.” Unused Resources and Economic Waste ). In the same year he first began working for public service, becoming secretary to New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia. From 1941 to 1942, David Rockefeller worked in the Department of Defense, Health and social security. In May 1942, he entered military service as a private, and by 1945 he had risen to the rank of captain. During the war he was in North Africa and France, working for military intelligence. After the war, he participated in various family business projects, and in 1947 became director of the Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations). In 1946, his long career began at Chase Manhattan Bank, of which he became president on January 1, 1961.

Views

Rockefeller is known as one of the first and most influential ideologues of globalization and neoconservatism. He is credited with a phrase allegedly spoken by him at a Bilderberg meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany, in 1991:

In 2002, on page 405 of his Memoirs (English edition), Rockefeller writes:

“For more than a hundred years, ideological extremists at all ends of the political spectrum have enthusiastically invoked certain famous events, such as my bad experience with Castro, to blame the Rockefeller family for the pervasive menacing influence they claim we exert.” on American political and economic institutions. Some even believe that we are part of a secret political group working against the interests of the United States, and characterize my family and I as "internationalists" colluding with other groups around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world , if you like. If that is the charge, then I plead guilty and I am proud of it.”

Proponent of birth control and restriction on a worldwide scale. David Rockefeller's concerns include rising energy and water consumption and pollution atmospheric air due to the growth of the world population. At a UN conference in 2008, he called on the UN to find “satisfactory ways to stabilize the world population.”

Charity

Bilderberg Club

Companions

Meetings with world leaders

D. Rockefeller met with prominent politicians from many countries. Among them:

• Nikita Khrushchev (August 1964, about 2 months before Khrushchev's ouster)

The meeting lasted 2 hours and 15 minutes. David Rockefeller called it "interesting." According to him, Khrushchev spoke about the need to increase trade turnover between the USSR and the USA (New York Times September 12, 1964).

• Alexey Kosygin (May 21, 1973)

Details of the meeting were not disclosed. According to official data, the issue of trade relations between the USSR and the USA was discussed in anticipation of the adoption by the US Congress of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, limiting trade relations with the USSR. In an interview with the New York Times on May 22, 1973, D. Rockefeller said:

“Soviet leaders seem confident that President Nixon will push [in Congress] for most favored nation trade treatment for the USSR.”

However, this did not happen and the Jackson-Vanik amendment was adopted in 1974.

• Fidel Castro (??-2001), Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, the last Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
• Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

On March 22, 1976, D. Rockefeller “agreed to become an informal financial adviser” to A. Sadat. After 18 months, Sadat announced his readiness to visit Israel, and after another 10 months the Camp David Accords were signed, which changed the geopolitical situation in the Middle East in favor of the United States.

• Mikhail Gorbachev (1989, 1991, 1992)

In 1989, David Rockefeller visited the USSR at the head of a Trilateral Commission delegation that included Henry Kissinger, former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (a Bilderberg member and later editor-in-chief of the EU constitution), former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, and William Hyland, editor of the Council on International Relations of Foreign Affairs magazine. At a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, the delegation was interested in how the USSR was going to integrate into world economy and received the appropriate explanations from Mikhail Gorbachev.

The next meeting between D. Rockefeller and other representatives of the Trilateral Commission and Mikhail Gorbachev, with the participation of his entourage, took place in Moscow in 1991.

Then M. S. Gorbachev paid a return visit to New York. On May 12, 1992, already a private citizen, he met with Rockefeller at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

The official purpose of the visit was negotiations on Mikhail Gorbachev receiving financial assistance in the amount of 75 million dollars for the organization of a global fund and a “presidential (?) library on the American model.”

Negotiations continued for an hour. The next day, in an interview with the New York Times, David Rockefeller said that Mikhail Gorbachev was “very energetic, extremely lively and full of ideas.”

On October 20, 2003, David Rockefeller arrived in Russia again. The official purpose of the visit is the presentation of the Russian translation of his memoirs. On the same day, David Rockefeller met with Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

Other activities

In 1993, he headed the Russian-American Banking Forum, a group of advisers sent by the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with the support of Russian President Boris Yeltsin to develop modernization measures banking system Russia.

Wife, children, home

David Rockefeller married Margaret "Peggy" McGrath (1915-1996) on September 7, 1940. She was the daughter of a partner in a prominent Wall Street law firm. They had six children:

1. David Rockefeller Jr. (b. July 24, 1941) - Vice President of Rockefeller Family And Associates; Chairman of the Board of Directors of Rockefeller Financial Services; Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation.
2. Abby Rockefeller (born 1943) - eldest daughter, a rebel, she was a supporter of Marxism, admired Fidel Castro, and in the late 60s and early 70s she was an ardent feminist who belonged to the Women's Liberation organization.
3. Neva Rockefeller Goodwin (born 1944) - economist and philanthropist. She is the director of the Global Development Andes Environment Institute.
4. Peggy Dulaney (b. 1947) - founder of the Synergos Institute in 1986, member of the board of directors of the Council for international relations, serves on the committee of advisors of the David Rockefeller Center for Study Latin America at Harvard University.
5. Richard Rockefeller (b. 1949) – physician and philanthropist, Chairman of the Board of Directors international group Doctors Without Borders, manager of the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation trust.
6. Eileen Rockefeller Groweld (born 1952) is a venture philanthropist who founded Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors in New York in 2002.

As of 2002, David Rockefeller had 10 grandchildren: son David's children: Ariana and Camilla, daughter Neva's children: David, Miranda, daughter Peggy's children: Michael, son Richard's children: Clay and Rebecca, daughter Abby's children: Christopher, daughter's children Eileen: Danny and Adam.

One of his granddaughters, Miranda Duncan (b. 1971), came to the attention of the press in April 2005 when she publicly resigned without explanation from her post as a corruption investigator for the UN Oil-for-Petroleum Program. for food."

Rockefeller's main home is the Hudson Pines estate, located on family lands in Westchester County. He also owns a house in Manhattan, New York, at 65 East Street, as well as a country residence known as "Four Winds" in Livingston, New York, Columbia County, where his wife founded the Simmental beef farm ( named after a valley in the Swiss Alps).

10 secrets from the life of the richest dynasty.

In contact with

Classmates

There is a lot of gossip and legends about millionaires - people want to know how they managed to maintain their vast empire, while other companies emerged, went bankrupt or merged with others.

Among the famous families, the Rockefellers occupy special place, the surname became associated with wealth. However, few people know what lay at the heart of the financial empire. Secrets of one of the world's richest dynasties that you didn't know.

Horse thief

The father of the first billionaire in history, William Rockefeller (then his last name sounded like “Rockenfeller”), was born in 1810. Officially, he was engaged in the sale of medicines. However, he was not an ordinary pharmacist, did not have special education and traded drugs, collaborating with various kinds healers.

William traveled throughout the northeastern United States selling suspicious medicinal potions. In 1849, when John Rockefeller, William's son, was 10 years old, the family urgently had to change their place of residence, and the move resembled flight. The reason, as the documents show, was very significant - William Rockefeller was accused of horse theft.

Married to a cheater

The mother of the richest man in the world was Eliza Davison. When she first saw William, who, while participating in another fraud, was posing as a deaf-mute, she exclaimed: “I would marry this man if he were not deaf-mute!”

William quickly realized that this was a profitable match - his father gave Eliza a dowry of 500 dollars. They soon got married, and two years later John was born

Rockefeller Sr.

Eliza did not part with her husband, having found out that he not only heard everything perfectly, but on occasion he used foul language no worse than a drunken lumberjack. She did not leave her husband even when he brought his mistress Nancy Brown into the house, and she - in turn with Eliza - began to bear children for William.

My husband left at night to work. He disappeared in the darkness, without explaining where he was going or why, and returned a few months later at dawn - Eliza woke up from the sound of hitting her window glass pebble. She ran out of the house, threw back the bolt, opened the gate, and her husband rode into the yard - on a new horse, in a new suit, and sometimes with diamonds on his fingers.

The handsome man made good money: he took prizes at shooting competitions, and smartly traded glass under the sign “The best emeralds in the world from Golconda!” He also successfully posed as a famous herbal doctor, selling various supplements that are now called dietary supplements.

He walked from door to door in different areas America and sold “miracle” remedies to housewives. Neighbors called him Bill the Devil: some considered William a professional gambler, others considered him a bandit.

After several years wandering life The Rockefeller family finally settled in Cleveland, but not because Big Bill - as William Rockefeller was nicknamed among horse dealers - settled down.

It’s just that one fine day in 1855 he left for an unknown destination, marrying a certain Margaret, 25 -year-old girl, who knew him as Dr. William Livingston. Moreover, he never divorced Eliza, which means, in fact, he was a bigamist.

Little businessman

“From a young age, my mother and priest instilled in me the importance of working and saving,” recalled John Rockefeller. Doing “business” was part of the family upbringing. Even as a young child, John would buy a pound of candy, divide it into small piles, and sell it at a markup to his own sisters.

At the age of seven, he sold the turkeys he raised to his neighbors, and lent the $50 he earned to his neighbor at 7% per annum. John subsequently appreciated these lessons. And from communicating with his father, he gained the firm conviction that alcohol and tobacco are a vice, and this is very bad. And looking at how his mother suffered from her husband’s frequent infidelities, he decided even in childhood that he would never do this.

“He was a very quiet boy,” one of the townspeople recalled many years later, “he was always thinking.” From the outside, John looked distracted: it seemed as if the child was constantly struggling with some insoluble problem.

The impression was deceptive - the boy was distinguished by a tenacious memory, acumen and unshakable calm: while playing checkers, he tormented his partners, thinking about each move for half an hour.

At the same time, he was a sensitive boy: when his sister died, John ran into the backyard, threw himself on the ground and lay there all day. And having matured, Rockefeller did not become such a monster as he was sometimes portrayed: he once asked about a classmate whom he once liked and, having learned that she was widowed and in poverty, the owner of Standard Oil immediately awarded her a pension.

Working for an uncle

John Rockefeller never finished school. At 16, with a three-month accounting course under his belt, he began looking for work in Cleveland, where his family then lived. Six weeks later he got a job as an assistant accountant at the trading company Hewitt and Tuttle.

At first he was paid $17 a month, and then $25. When receiving them, John felt a sense of guilt, finding the reward excessively inflated. In order not to waste a single cent, the thrifty Rockefeller bought a small ledger from his first salary, where he recorded all his expenses, and carefully kept it all his life.

As for work, this was his only paid job. At the age of 18, John Rockefeller became a junior partner of businessman Maurice Clark. Helped get the new company off the ground Civil War 1861–1865. The warring armies paid generously for provisions, and their partners supplied them with flour, pork and salt.

Towards the end of the war, oil deposits were discovered in Pennsylvania, near Cleveland, and the city found itself at the center of an oil rush. By 1864, Clark and Rockefeller were already deep into Pennsylvania oil.

A year later, Rockefeller decided to focus only on oil, but Clark was against it. Then, for $72,500, John bought out his partner’s share and plunged headlong into the oil business.

Oil at any cost

In 1870, Rockefeller created his famous Standard Oil. Together with his friend and business partner Henry Flagler, he began to gather disparate oil production and oil refining enterprises into a single powerful trust. Competitors could not resist him,

Rockefeller gave them a choice: unification or ruin. If convictions did not work, the harshest methods were used. For example, Standard Oil reduced prices on a competitor’s local market, forcing it to operate at a loss. Or Rockefeller sought to cut off oil supplies to recalcitrant refiners.

By 1879 the war was effectively over. Rockefeller's company controlled 90% of US oil refining capacity. But in 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed to combat monopolies.

Until 1911, Rockefeller and his partner managed to circumvent this law, but then Standard Oil was divided into thirty-four companies (virtually all of today's major American oil companies trace their history back to Standard Oil).

Home Economics

Rockefeller was married to Laura Celestina Spelman. He once remarked: “Without her advice, I would have remained poor.” Biographers write that Rockefeller did his best to teach his children to work, modesty and unpretentiousness. John created a unique layout for the house market economy: He appointed daughter Laura as "director" and ordered the children to keep detailed accounting books.

Each child received a few cents for killing a fly, for sharpening a pencil, for an hour of music lessons, for a day of abstaining from candy. Each of the children had their own garden bed, where the work of removing weeds also had its price. Little Rockefellers were fined for being late for breakfast.

Owner of 2.5% of US GDP

In 1917, John Rockefeller's personal fortune was estimated at $900–1,200 million, which was 2.5% of the then United States GDP. In modern terms, Rockefeller owned approximately $150 billion - he is still the richest of people.

By the end of his life, Rockefeller, in addition to shares in each of the 34 Standard Oil subsidiaries, owned 16 railroad and six steel companies, nine banks, six shipping companies, nine real estate firms and three orange groves.

Rockefeller's donations to charity during his life exceeded $500 million. Of this, about $80 million went to the University of Chicago, and at least $100 million went to the Baptist Church, of which he and his wife were parishioners.

John Rockefeller also created and financed the New York Institute for Medical Research, the Council for Universal Education and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Military dynasty

The new head of the dynasty - John D. Rockefeller II (Jr.) turned out to be worthy son my father. First World War brought the Rockefeller family $500 million in net profit.

The Second World War was even more profitable enterprise- tank and aircraft engines required gasoline, and it was produced at Rockefeller factories around the clock.

The result was $2 billion in net profits earned during the war years. Rockefeller Jr. married the daughter of one of the most influential politicians America at the beginning of the twentieth century, Senator Nelson Aldrich, during long period who enjoyed almost the same influence in Washington as the presidents of the country.

Strange collection

John Rockefeller Jr. left luxurious palaces and villas to his five sons and daughter. In winter, the young Rockefellers lived in New York in a nine-story family mansion.

They had their own clinic, special colleges, swimming pools, tennis courts, concert and exhibition halls. Rockefeller's 3,000-acre estate includes riding arenas, a velodrome, a home theater worth half a million dollars, ponds for sailing yachts, and more.

The equipment for the games room alone cost the child-loving oil king $520,000. When the youngest of the brothers (David) grew up, each received at their disposal city mansions, summer villas and other real estate necessary for social life.

As for David leading today financial business family, then, according to the American press, his only hobby is collecting beetles. There are 40 thousand of them in the collection; David Rockefeller, newspapers report, always carries a bottle with him for captured insects.

No longer the richest

Rockefeller Financial Services currently has $34 billion in assets under management. Among them is the Vallares oil and gas group, shares in Johnson & Johnson, Dell, Procter & Gamble and Oracle. The majority of the company's shares are owned by the Rockefeller family.

But David Rockefeller’s personal fortune is estimated (according to Forbes) at only $2.5 billion. At the same time, the personal fortune of Russian businessman Roman Abramovich is estimated by Forbes at $10.2 billion.

The Russian is now actively investing in foreign companies. One of the last large purchases- 23.3% stake in the British telecommunications group Truphone, worth £75 million.

Experts estimate that Abramovich's art collection is worth at least a billion dollars. In January 2013, he bought a collection of 40 works by Ilya Kabakov, the approximate cost of which is $60 million.

A few years ago, Abramovich became the buyer of a 70-acre estate on the island of St. Barths in the Caribbean. The land on which the estate is located once belonged to David Rockefeller.

The cost of Abramovich's new acquisition is $89 million. The estate includes several bungalows with ocean views, tennis courts, swimming pools and dance pavilions.

The name Rockefeller has long been on everyone's lips and is associated with untold wealth, which is not unreasonable. John Rockefeller - American billionaire. He went down in history as the richest man in the world. He founded the family oil business empire and laid the foundation for the powerful Rockefeller clan, which continues to thrive today. Our article will focus on one of his descendants. So, who is Rockefeller David?

David's childhood

Grandfather John's beloved grandson was born on June 12, 1915 (yes, the tycoon celebrated his centenary in 2015) in New York. Since childhood, little David was instilled with the ability to know the value of money, the ability to earn and accumulate it. Children received incentive dollar bonuses for their creative deeds. They were paid for good studies, help around the house and exemplary behavior. Even giving up candy had its consequences monetary reward, which increased every day as I abstained from sweets. It was also customary in the family to fine children for being late and various missteps. It is also noteworthy that each child had a personal ledger for recording expenses and income.

Moreover, when the children reached adulthood, the head of the family offered them a “deal” - two and a half thousand dollars each for giving up smoking, alcoholic beverages, and an additional amount of the same amount if the children adhere to this rule until they are 25 years old. Huge money by the standards of those times. And even today this is quite a considerable amount, especially for young people.

Rockefeller David: education, career and power

The Rockefeller family paid great attention to the education of children - after graduating from private school, young David was able to enter Harvard without obstacles, then receive a doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago. During his studies, the young man made useful contacts, which greatly helped him at the beginning of his political career.

The Second World War determined life path David. Having entered the service as a private and rising to the rank of officer, he ended up in Algeria, where he began to build an intelligence network. Here, and then in France, he learned to build relationships with by different people, influential and not so, find compromises and be a diplomat.

Construction experience business relations helped David in his future career - after the war, he got a job as an ordinary employee in his uncle's bank, Chase Bank. After 12 years of work, he became vice-chairman of the institution. His career did not end there - after the merger of Chase Bank with the largest Manhattan Bank, David Rockefeller, whose photo is presented in our article, became vice-chairman of the Board of Directors, and later its president.

Career Development

While actively developing his career and family business, the man did not forget to simultaneously expand his sphere of influence and connections, because, in his opinion, one cannot exist without the other. Therefore, from a young age, he began to take part in various closed clubs and meetings of influential people. Bilderberg Club (a closed community that has a secret influence on everything political events in the world), Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission (union of representatives North America, Western Europe, Japan and South Korea in order to resolve world conflicts and problems) is a list of only the most important and influential communities.

Children

In 1940, David Rockefeller, whose biography is detailed in our article, married Margaret McGrath, the daughter of one of the owners of a large law firm in New York. In their marriage they had six children. All of them are alive to this day, except for one - Richard Rockefeller. In 2014, he crashed on a plane that he was at the controls of. The youngest son followed in his father's footsteps and is his right hand in many areas of family business.

Rockefeller David is rich not only in money and connections. He has more than a dozen grandchildren. If you believe the press, then each of them goes their own way in life and does not want to go “headlong” into the family business.

Charity

There is a saying: “What more money, the more they are missing.” It's not often that you hear about wealthy people doing charity work. David Rockefeller in in this case exception. The New York Times estimated that the total amount of all donations made by the richest American banker is almost $1 billion. Once David even donated to the university at Harvard, where he once received higher education, 100 million dollars. This charitable contribution became the largest in the history of the university.

Rockefeller David, whose personal life is still of interest to many, is the only one of the entire clan who wrote an autobiography. The book was published in 2002 and is titled “Banker in the 20th Century. Memoirs".

The billionaire's favorite hobby is beetles - once in an interview, Rockefeller David (in his youth he looked very much like his father) shared that he always has a beetle box with him. After all, it is unknown what interesting specimen he might encounter on his way. It so happened that he discovered five new species of these insects. And the collector is very proud that it was named after him. rare view scarab beetle living in the mountains of Mexico - Diplotaxis rockefelleri.

Relationship with brother Nelson

It should be noted that he passionately loved his wife and was not known as a “womanizer” like his brother Nelson. By the way, relatives did not like each other due to absolute opposite characters. Nelson Rockefeller was hot-tempered, power-hungry and self-serving. He loved women and entertainment. All these vices even cost him the presidency.

David, on the contrary, had a calm disposition since childhood, was always taciturn and preferred solitude.

Operations

In 1976, David Rockefeller was in car accident, the consequence of which was a heart and kidney transplant. Since then, he has undergone five more heart transplants. Apparently, it is to these most important organs that he owes his longevity.

07.02.2015 46 394 4 Reading time: 14 min.

Today I will tell you about how I made my fortune John Rockefeller- first dollar billionaire, the richest man in the world in the history of mankind. To this day, the name of this man is a symbol of wealth. John Davison Rockefeller lived in the second half of the 19th and first half of the 20th century, but still heads. The first billionaire of our time, the leader - Bill Gates lags behind him in terms of financial status by more than 4 times! Biography and success story of John Rockefeller, the most Interesting Facts from life in today's publication on Financial Genius.

John Rockefeller: biography. Childhood

John Davison Rockefeller Sr. (later he had a son with the same name) was born in 1839 in Richford, New York. His parents were very religious (Protestants), the family was large: a total of 6 children were born, of whom John Rockefeller was the second. John's father had a small capital, but often left for long periods of time, selling elixirs; during these periods, his mother was poor and saved a lot on everything.

From childhood, mother, father and the priest, whom the Rockefeller family often visited, taught their children to take care of personal finances, work and earn money on their own. WITH early years business became one of the main directions of family education for John.

His father often paid him for various services, while bargaining. In the very at a young age Rockefeller was already buying a pound of candy, then distributing it into piles and reselling it to his sisters at a higher price. At the age of 7, he began working part-time for his neighbors, digging potatoes for them, and raising turkeys for sale. Since childhood, John Davison Rockefeller wrote down all his income and expenses in a small book, and put all the money he earned into his piggy bank. By the way, he kept and continued to maintain his home accounting, the maintenance of which began from an early age.

At the age of 13, John Rockefeller saved up $50 and lent it to a farmer he knew at 7.5% per annum.

John successfully graduated from school, after which he entered college, which taught the basics of accounting and commerce, but soon decided that he would only waste time there, so he left college and instead completed a three-month accounting course, after which he began.

John Rockefeller: biography. Career and Entrepreneurship

John Rockefeller got his first serious job at the age of 16, after 6 weeks of searching: he first became an assistant accountant in trading company With wages 17 dollars, and was soon promoted to accountant with a salary of 25 dollars a month. Rockefeller proved himself so well in this place that after some time, when the head of the company left his post, John became the manager of this company with a salary of $600. However, Rockefeller did not like the fact that the previous manager was paid $2,000 a month, and he was only paid $600, so he soon quit.

This work became the only place work for hire in the biography of John Rockefeller.

In 1857, Rockefeller learned that an entrepreneur from England was looking for a business partner with a capital of $2,000. At that time, he only had $800, but he was inspired by this idea, so he borrowed the missing money from his father at 10% per annum and became the junior co-founder of the Clark and Rochester company, which specialized in the sale of hay, grain, meat and some others goods.

When the company had a need to borrow to increase working capital, negotiations with the bank were conducted by John Rockefeller: thanks to his sincerity and talent for persuasion, he was able to convince the manager to provide their still young company with a loan in the required amount.

John Davison Rockefeller: oil business

At the beginning of the 2nd half of the 19th century, kerosene lamps became popular in the United States, which stimulated an increase in demand for the main raw material for their production - oil. During this period, John Davison Rockefeller met the practicing chemist Samuel Andrews, who specialized in the processing of petroleum raw materials and predicted a big increase popularity of kerosene as a lighting product. They combined their capital with that of Rockefeller's business partner Clark and created the oil refining company Andrews and Clark.

John Rockefeller saw great prospects for the oil market and tried to persuade Clark to transfer all his available capital to this business. When he still refused, Rockefeller bought out his share in the enterprise for $72,500 and devoted himself entirely to the oil business.

In 1870, John Davison Rockefeller Sr. created his main oil company- Standard Oil, which in the future brought him his main wealth. This company has already carried out a full cycle: from oil production to production and supply of the final product.

At his company, John Rockefeller introduced a non-standard system: instead of wages he paid employees with company shares, which constantly grew in price and brought good income. It turned out that the employees themselves were interested in doing their work diligently and efficiently: after all, the success of the company depended on this, and therefore the increase in the price of its shares and their personal income.

The Standard Oil company developed rapidly, increasing its turnover, and John Rockefeller began to invest the profits received from its activities in other oil companies. He found an opportunity to dump on the cost of transporting products by agreeing with railway transport companies, which his competitors could not afford. Therefore, Rockefeller presented his competitors with a choice: either merge with him or go bankrupt. So many of them gradually became part of Standard Oil.

In just 10 years, John Rockefeller's company became an almost absolute monopolist in the United States: it concentrated 95% of the country's oil production. After this, Rockefeller raised prices for his products and Standard Oil became the largest oil company in the world.

Another 10 years later, in 1890, an antitrust law was adopted in the United States. At first, the oil tycoon bypassed its norms in every possible way, but when he could no longer resist the authorities - 21 years later, in 1911, he divided his corporation into 34 enterprises, retaining a controlling stake in each of them.

The Standard Oil company brought Rockefeller a profit of $3 million annually (in today's money, that's billions). The corporation's assets included:

• more than 400 enterprises;
• more than 90 miles of railway tracks;
• more than 10 thousand railway tanks;
• 60 oil tankers;
• 150 ships.

The company's share in global oil turnover exceeded 70%.

John Rockefeller: net worth

Oil tycoon John Rockefeller's fortune was estimated at $1.4 billion, or $318 billion in today's US currency. At the time of his death, Rockefeller's fortune amounted to 1.54% of US GDP, and in 1917 it reached 2.5% of US GDP.

In addition to Standard Oil, John Rockefeller's assets included:

• 16 railway companies;
• 6 steel production companies;
• 9 companies involved in real estate trading;
• 6 shipping companies;
• 9 banks;
• 3 orange groves.

Rockefeller lived richly, but never focused on his wealth. He had several villas and houses in different states, land plot 273 hectares, private golf course.

John Rockefeller: charity

From his earliest years, John Rockefeller consistently used 10% of his income to donate to the Baptist Church. Over the course of his life, he transferred more than $100 million there.

In addition, Rockefeller donated about $80 million to the University of Chicago, he also became the founder and sponsor of the New York Institute for Medical Research, and later established the famous Rockefeller Charitable Foundation.

At the end of his life, John Rockefeller gave away about half a billion dollars to charity.

John Rockefeller Jr.

John Davison Rockefeller Jr. is the only son of John Rockefeller. He inherited $460 million from his father, and spent about this amount on charity throughout his life. In particular, thanks to his donations, the UN headquarters in New York and the famous Empire Building were built.

John Rockefeller Jr. left behind 5 sons (known as the Rockefeller grandchildren) and a daughter. Each of them has its own story, but all are somehow connected with running a business.

John Rockefeller: interesting facts

Since childhood, John Rockefeller dreamed of living to be 100 years old and earning 100 thousand dollars, but he only lived to be 97 years old and earned 1.4 billion.

At the age of 96, John Davison Rockefeller received an insurance payout of $5 million as a person who lived to that age. The probability of such an “insured event” occurring Insurance Company estimated as 1:100,000, and this was the first such case in the history of the company.

In 1908, John Rockefeller wrote a book, “Memoirs,” in which he described his life path, his success story. To this day, the Memoirs of John Rockefeller is a very popular book, published many times in huge editions, highly appreciated by readers and critics.

Workers of the Rockefeller company used to scare their children with it: “If you cry, Rockefeller will take you.”