Their sister, Abby Rockefeller Mauze, known as “Babs,” died in 1976.
Once the nation’s wealthiest family, the Rockefellers today pale in comparison with 21st century tycoons such as Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates or investor Warren Buffett.
Rockefeller once joked that he was the only Rockefeller of his generation who had to “work for a living.” He was either chairman, president or CEO of Chase from 1957 to 1981, creating a global financial institution, traveling to 103 countries and meeting with dozens of presidents, kings and prime ministers. He accumulated about 150,000 names in an electronic Rolodex.
“Because I started sooner, I think I probably knew more heads of state than anyone else, possibly with the exception of Henry Kissinger, but maybe even including” him, Rockefeller said in a December 2003 interview.
Rockefeller was criticized for meeting with dictators including Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations for more than 60 years and its chairman for 15, Rockefeller was also a frequent target of conspiracy theorists because of his membership in secretive international policy groups such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group.
“Maybe in another 20 years I’ll outlive all my bad press,” Rockefeller said in the interview.
At Chase, he outlasted rivals, scandals, operational problems and board pressure to retire on schedule at age 65. Today, Chase is part of JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest U.S. bank by assets, after Chemical Banking Corp. acquired Chase in 1995. The combined company added J.P. Morgan & Co. five years later and Bank One Corp. in 2004.
JPMorgan Merger
Rockefeller said he was shocked by the merger with J.P. Morgan, which united the Rockefellers’ bank with the legendary bank of their only true early 20th-century rival for financial power, J. Pierpont Morgan.
Rockefeller, as chairman of the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association, and his brother Nelson, as governor, played key roles in developing the World Trade Center and the Wall Street financial district in the 1960s and 1970s.