Salomon Brothers
former American investment bank
Salomon Brothers, Inc., was an American multinational bulge bracket investment bank headquartered in New York City. It was one of the five largest investment banking enterprises in the United States and a very profitable firm on Wall Street during the 1980s and 1990s. Its CEO and chairman at that time, John Gutfreund, was nicknamed "the King of Wall Street".
Salomon Brothers served many of the largest corporations in America. It was a leading underwriter of corporate bonds and one of the top firms in futures and options (known as "derivatives") and in securitization in a range of asset classes including commercial real estate securities.
The bank was famed for its "cutthroat corporate culture that rewarded risk-taking with massive bonuses, punishing poor results with a swift boot". In Michael Lewis' 1989 book Liar's Poker, the insider descriptions of life at Salomon gave way to the popular view of banking in the 1980s and 1990s as a money-focused and work-intensive environment. It was acquired by Travelers Group in 1997, which in turn became part of Citigroup the next year.
In February 2022, it was announced that the Salomon Brothers brand will be revived by a group of former employees and execs and operate as full-service investment bank again.
History
Founding
Founded in 1910 by Arthur, Herbert, and Percy Salomon, sons of Sophia Flora Heilbron and Ferdinand Salomon, along with a clerk, Ben Levy.
The public source identifies “Salomon Brothers” as former American investment bank. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Salomon, Brothers and former.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2034767. VIAF identifies the subject as 146603802. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1997, 2022 and 1910.
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This entry incorporates text from “Salomon Brothers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.