Henry Lehman was a German-born American businessman and the founder of Lehman Brothers financial services, which declared bankruptcy in 2008.
Background
Lehman was born under the name of Hayum Lehmann to a Jewish family, the son of Abraham Lehmann, a cattle merchant in the small Franconian town of Rimpar near Würzburg, Lehman emigrated to the United States in 1844, where he changed his name to Henry Lehman.
Career
He settled in Montgomery, Alabama, and opened a dry goods store named, "H. Lehman". In those years, cotton was the most important crop of the Southern United States. Capitalizing on cotton"s extremely high market value around the world, the Lehman brothers became cotton factors, accepting cotton bales from customers as payment for their merchandise.
They eventually began a second business as traders in cotton.
Within a few years, this became the major part of their firm. In 1855, Henry Lehman died from yellow fever while travelling in New Orleans.