Marcus Goldman (born Marcus Goldmann; December 9, 1821 – July 20, 1904) was a Jewish American investment banker, businessman, and financier. He was the founder of Goldman Sachs, which has since become one of the world's largest investment banks. Early life Mark Goldmann was born on December 9, 1821, in Trappstadt, Bavaria, Germany, to an Ashkenazi Jewish family. His father, Wolf Goldman, was a farmer and cattle dealer. His mother, Bella Katz Oberbrunner, who came from Zeil am Main, was widowed with five children from a former marriage; her first husband was called Samuel Oberbrunner. His paternal grandfather was called Jonathan Marx until he changed his name to Goldmann when Jews were allowed to have surnames in 1811. While attending classes at the synagogue in Würzburg, he met Joseph Sachs, who would become his lifelong friend. Goldman immigrated to the United States from Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1848 during the first great wave of Jewish immigration to America, resulting from the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states. Upon his arrival in America, his name was changed to Marcus Goldman by US immigration. Career Goldman worked as a peddler with a horse-drawn cart and later as a shopkeeper in Philadelphia, where he initially rented the room in a boarding-house previously rented by his old friend Joseph Sachs. In 1869, Goldman relocated to New York City and hung out a shingle on Pine Street in lower Manhattan, with the legend "Marcus Goldman & Co.”, setting himself up as a broker of IOUs. From his earliest days of his business, Goldman was able to single handedly transact as much as $5 million worth of commercial paper a year. Successful though he was, Goldman's business was insignificant compared to that of the other Jewish-German bankers of the day. Concerns like J. & W. Seligman & Co., with working capital of $6 million in 1869 (equivalent of $ million in ), were already modern-day investment bankers immersed in underwriting and trading railroad bonds. In 1882, Goldman invited his son-in-law Samuel to join him in the business and changed the firm's name to M. Goldman and Sachs. Business boomed—soon the new firm was turning over $30 million worth of paper a year—and the firm's capital was now $100,000 (equivalent of $ million in ). For almost fifty years after its inception, all of Goldman Sachs's partners were members of intermarried families. In 1885, Goldman