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Ford IPO was 'biggest stock issue ever'
Henry Ford never wanted his company to go public.
He might not have said, "Over my dead body," but he certainly felt that way - and in the end that's how it worked out.
Today it is hard to remember that Ford Motor Co. has been public for less than half of its 100-year life. By comparison, General Motors stock had been traded on the New York Stock Exchange for almost 40 years when Ford went public on Jan. 17, 1956. Ford Motor stock has become one of the world's most widely held and most actively traded issues.
Why did Ford stay private so long? The Ford founder hated a lot of people and a lot of things, but he probably hated being in debt most of all. And in a sense, debt is what being publicly traded is all about.
Going public means, in effect, borrowing money from the public and sharing some measure of control of the company with those who buy shares. Henry Ford looked down his nose at GM because, as he saw it, GM went public in 1916 as a last resort to keep from going out of business. Henry Ford wanted no part of the Big Board, Wall Street or public ownership.
When his son, Edsel, was brave enough to suggest going public, Henry Ford said: "I'll take every factory down brick by brick before I let any of those Jew speculators get stock in the company," according to biographers.
Henry Ford got his wish, at least in his lifetime. He died in April 1947, nine years before the initial public offering.
Before he died, ironically, the founder set up a structure that eventually led to the IPO. The issue at the time was that Henry Ford wanted to avoid what he considered excessive inheritance taxes, signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935.
Death and taxes
"The law said fortunes over $4 million were liable to a 50 percent assessment, and from $50 million upward the tax levy rose to 70 percent," Robert Lacey wrote in Ford: The Men and the Machine.
To circumvent the inheritance taxes that would be incurred when Henry Ford died, Ford Motor Co. in...