NYSEs opening bell honors Italian Americans who beat stereotypes to reach pinnacle of finance
The New York Stock Exchange held its first-ever Columbus Day tribute Monday morning with a reception featuring some of the great Italian-American financiers of my generation.On The Money was lucky enough to score an invite to the event — which included the guests of honor ringing the opening bell — and not just to celebrate the ethnic pride of your humble correspondent.I also learned something valuable about the Italian-American experience that the faux controversy over the explorer’s alleged misdeeds obfuscates. That reminder came through loud and clear during a private reception and some opening remarks by Frank Bisignano, a long-time Wall Street heavyweight who is now working for the Trump administration as head of the Social Security Administration and the IRS. Bisignano — himself from an Italian immigrant family in Brooklyn — was the event’s organizer.
He’s had quite a career on Wall Street, working at major banks Citigroup and JPM, then bringing tech companies public.He now finds himself at the top of government because of his financial acumen.
But as Bisignano explained, up until relatively recently, Italian Americans were shunted to the lowest confines of Wall Street — the so-called back office where trades and deals were processed. Even those who went to college weren’t expected to do much more than graduate to being floor brokers at the NYSE.After all, this was a race stereotyped as organ grinders and mobsters.
Who would trust them handling the public’s money?Through grit and intelligence, Italian Americans persevered, or as Bisignano put it: “They put us in the back and somehow we got to the front.”Who put us at the front? Bisignano then pointed to the crowd, and a group of men he called the “1927 Yankees of Wall Street” who defied the stereotypes and became business leaders and much more.That would include Dick Grasso, the former head of the Big Board, who made an appearance after a long absence from the institution he...