Almerindo Portfolio Explained
| Almerindo Portfolio |
| Birth Date: | 23 May 1878 |
| Birth Place: | Schiavi di Abruzzo, Italy |
| Death Date: | 23 January 1966 |
| Death Place: | Gabriels, New York, USA |
| Occupation: | Businessman, New York City Treasurer |
| Nationality: | Italian American |
| Children: | 2 daughters |
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]
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
- List of Italian Americans
External links
Notes and References
- https://www.nytimes.com/1966/01/26/archives/almerindo-portfolio-88-dead-city-treasurer-for-la-guardia-immigrant.html Almerindo Portfolio, 88, Dead; City Treasurer for La Guardia; Immigrant Built Fortune, Then Gave Business to Workers Headed Bank
- http://www.lookupthe.name/italians.php?f=ln&q=Porfilio Porfilio Surname : Italian Immigration to America
- https://books.google.com/books?id=BRaxAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22Almerindo+Porfilio%22&pg=PA1844 Laws of the State of New York, Volume 2
- https://web.archive.org/web/20081214212836/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,761672,00.html Radio: Cause
- 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, 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, ., Page 232.
- http://politicalgraveyard.com/parties/R/1940/NY.html New York Delegation to the 1940 Republican National Convention
- http://www.faqs.org/cia/docs/133/0000220944/ITALIAN-AMERICANS-ORGANIZE-TO-DEMAND-ALLIED-STATUS-FOR-ITALY.html ITALIAN-AMERICANS ORGANIZE TO DEMAND ALLIED STATUS FOR ITALY
