When professional managers run companies; characteristic of the period of American business development when family members yielded control of their companies to professionals.

Named after former secretary of commerce Malcolm Baldrige, the award is actually four awards given annually to American companies to recognize their achievements.

Born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, to a seafaring family, Macy made several attempts to open a dry goods store but failed on each of them.

From the time of the first European settlements in the early 1600s, the lumber industry has been vital to the growth of the nation.

One of the first American tobacco producers, the company was founded by Pierre Lorillard (1742–76). Born in France, Lorillard immigrated to the United States and established an operation for curing tobacco on Chatham Street in New York City in 1760.

A giant hedge fund in Greenwich, Connecticut, the nearcollapse of which in September 1998 shook Wall Street and drew public attention to the role of hedge funds in the marketplace. 

Robert Livingston was born in New York City on November 27, 1746, the scion of an influential colonial family with roots dating to the 17th century.

Born in Iowa to Welsh immigrant parents, Lewis became a miner while still in his teens. In his late 20s, he began serving in the UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA (UMWA) and became acting president of the union in 1919.

A suburban town on Long Island, New York, that was the first purpose-built suburb in the United States. The town was built by Levitt & Sons, a family-run firm founded in 1929 that first conceived the idea in 1947.

An INVESTMENT BANKING house founded by Henry Lehman in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1845 as a dry goods merchandiser. Lehman was born in Germany in 1821 and immigrated to Alabama, where he established his general merchandise store.

Lee is generally considered the father of modern public and corporate relations. Born in Georgia, Lee attended Emory University and graduated from Princeton in 1898. After doing postgraduate work at Harvard Law School he dropped out when his money ran out.

An INVESTMENT BANKING company founded in New Orleans in 1848 by Alexandre, Lazare, and Simon Lazard, originally as a dry goods store.

Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Land studied at Harvard, where he became interested in the physics of polarized light.

Born in upstate New York, Lamont’s father was a Methodist minister.

A French term meaning “allow to do,” it was transformed into an economic theory stating that business should be allowed to operate with as little government interference as possible.

Investment banking firm founded by two German immigrants—Abraham Kuhn and Solomon Loeb—in 1867 in New York.

A department store chain originally founded in 1899 by Sebastien Sperling Kresge (1867–1966), a tinware salesman, as the S. S. Kresge Co.

A private Boston banking firm founded by Henry Kidder, Francis Peabody, and Oliver Peabody in 1865. Previously, the firm had been known as Thayer & Co., founded by John Eliot Thayer in 1824.

Son of a Cambridge logician and political economist, John Maynard Keynes was educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge.

Kennedy was the progenitor of an American political dynasty. Despite poor marks in economics, after graduating from Harvard College in 1912, Kennedy was drawn to a career in banking, serving as a Massachusetts assistant state bank examiner between 1912 and late 1913.

Kaiser was born in New York in 1882. After holding a number of menial jobs, he moved to Spokane, Washington. He learned the construction business and began to bid on public works projects, first in Canada and then in the United States.

New York advertising agency opened in 1871 by J. Walter Thompson; it made a fortune in the ADVERTISING INDUSTRY.

The term given to bonds of less than investment-grade quality.

Born on August 5, 1882, in Fort Scott, Kansas, Hugh S. Johnson was the son of Samuel L. Johnson, an attorney and rancher, and Elizabeth Mead Johnson.