Almerindo Portfolio (23 May 1878 – 23 January 1966) was an Italian-born American banker and financier. He was treasurer of New York City under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.[1] He was an immigrant from Schiavi di Abruzzo, Italy in 1888. [2] In 1908 he legally changed his name from Almerindo Porfilio.[3]
Almerindo Portfolio | |
|---|---|
| Born | 23 May 1878 Schiavi di Abruzzo, Italy |
| Died | 23 January 1966 Gabriels, New York, USA |
| Nationality | Italian American |
| Occupation(s) | Businessman, New York City Treasurer |
| Children | 2 daughters |
Portfolio rose from a $2-a-week messenger to the presidency of the Bank of Sicily in New York and the head of a cloak & suit company, that in 1924 he gifted to six employees.[4] He also worked as a newspaper publisher, commodity trader, and investment banker.
Between 1917 and 1919 he paid 300,000 Lira ($1.5 million in 2006 US dollars[5]) to install the first electric service in his home town of Schiavi di Abruzzo, Italy. He later gave 50,000 Lira ($255,000 in 2006 US dollars[6]) for the town's water utilities.[7]
In 1940 Portfolio was a delegate to the Republican National Convention.[8] In 1945 he was a member of a joint committee of influential Italian Americans promoting Allied status for Italy in World War II.[9]
Portfolio died on January 25, 1966, at the age of 88, in Gabriels, in upstate New York, at a tuberculosis cure facility.[1]
Portfolio’s brother in law and biographer was diplomat Paolo Alberto Rossi.
See also edit
References edit
- ^ a b Almerindo Portfolio, 88, Dead; City Treasurer for La Guardia; Immigrant Built Fortune, Then Gave Business to Workers Headed Bank, www.nytimes.com, January 25, 1966
- ^ Porfilio Surname : Italian Immigration to America, www.lookupthe.name, on the ship SS Letimbro
- ^ Laws of the State of New York, Volume 2, By New York (State), 1909, Google Books
- ^ Radio: Cause, Jul. 10, 1939, www.time.com
- ^ Assuming that 300,000 lira in 1918 was equivalent to $47,600, based on a 6.3 lira per dollar exchange rate as reported by The Crisis of Liberal Italy By Douglas J. Forsyth, page 205, at a time when the average family annual income was $1,518 as reported by Economic and demographic indicators, United States, 1918–19 Archived April 16, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, so the sum was 41 times average family annual income, and given that 2006 median family income was $48,800.
- ^ Ibid, 5.2 times average family annual income.
- ^ Schiavi di Abruzzo, Documenti e Storia, edited by L. Porfilio and P. Falasca, Marino Solfanelli Publishers, 1994, ISBN 88-7497-621-6., Page 232.
- ^ New York Delegation to the 1940 Republican National Convention, www.politicalgraveyard.com
- ^ ITALIAN-AMERICANS ORGANIZE TO DEMAND ALLIED STATUS FOR ITALY, CIA Document, www.faqs.org, 4/6/1945
External links edit
- Official website
- Biography, in Italian: La Vita di Almerindo Portfolio, by Paolo A. Rossi (1966).
- Reflections by Pasqualino Falasca, with permission of author, in Italian.