Harold was born on October 2, 1885 in Great Barrington, Massachussets, United States, the son of William Stanley and Lila Courtney Wetmore. His father was an inventor for whom the General Electric Company named its Stanley Works at Pittsfield, Massachussets.
Harold Stanley attended the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, where he played baseball and hockey. He then entered Yale University, where he was an outstanding hockey player. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1908.
After an extended trip to Europe, Stanley was employed by the National Commercial Bank in Albany, New York. In 1910 he joined the New York City bond house of J. G. White and Company as assistant treasurer.
In 1915, Stanley joined Guaranty Trust Company, becoming vice-president in charge of the bond department the following year. The department's rapid growth under his management led the bank to establish a subsidiary, the Guaranty Company (with Stanley as president), to handle the securities business. In the years immediately after World War I, the Guaranty Company underwrote and sold millions of dollars in bonds for government and private organizations. In joint ventures with J. P. Morgan and Company it floated some of the largest bond issues to that time.
Stanley attracted Wall Street attention as a leading authority on the bond market. Impressed by Stanley's expertise, J. P. Morgan, Jr. , offered him a partnership in the House of Morgan, where he replaced Dwight Whitney Morrow, who had just resigned to become ambassador to Mexico.
He concerned himself primarily with utility financing and investments, and soon was regarded as Morgan's utility expert. In the early 1930's congressional investigations, spawned by the deepening Great Depression, uncovered numerous instances of negligence and irresponsibility in the practices of the nation's bankers.
Pressure for reform resulted in a flurry of new federal banking and securities laws, including the Banking Act of 1933, which required the separation of commercial and investment banking. J. P. Morgan and Company chose to remain a bank of deposit and in June 1934 discontinued underwriting and wholesaling investment securities.
In 1935 Stanley became the president of the new firm. As a leading expert in his field, Stanley was frequently called to appear before congressional committees.
In 1938 he testified at the Temporary National Economic Committee hearings in opposition to competitive bidding among bond houses in the placement of bonds. At that time he wrote a long and influential memorandum, Competitive Bidding for New Issues of Corporate Securities, which argued that competitive bidding resulted in overpriced issues and poorer securities and would drive out the smaller bond houses.
Nevertheless, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a ruling in 1941 requiring competitive, public, sealed bidding for all issues of registered holding companies and their subsidiaries under its jurisdiction. When Morgan, Stanley and Company reorganized in 1940 from a corporation to a partnership, Stanley became its senior partner.
Also in 1940 he led the New York area campaign for the United States Committee for the Care of European Children, a private group devoted to aiding young war refugees. The committee raised $1. 5 million under his leadership.
Stanley was a principal witness in 1947 when the Justice Department brought antitrust charges under the Sherman Act against seventeen investment banking firms, including Morgan, Stanley, and the Investment Bankers Association. The government failed to demonstrate that monopolistic practices existed in the investment banking business, and the case was dismissed. Judge Harold R. Medina, who presided, paid special tribute to "the absolute integrity of Harold Stanley. "
After his retirement in 1955, Stanley remained a limited partner of Morgan, Stanley and Company until his death at Philadelphia.
He was a member of the Links Club of New York, the National Golf Club, the Racquet and Tennis Club, and the Yale Club.
He was also a member of the Skull and Bones secret society.
In 1914 he married Edith Thurston; they had no children. Stanley's wife died in 1934. In January 1939 he married Louise Todd Gilbert, widow of Seymour Parker Gilbert, a former Morgan partner.
