Biography

The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's John J. Raskob page on 13 March 2024, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Raskob was born to John and Anna Frances (née Moran) Raskob, in Lockport, New York, where his father ran a successful cigar-production business.[3] His parents were of German and Irish descent, respectively. The Raskob family originated in the Eifel region in Germany. Raskob's grandfather was an emigrant from the village of Großlittgen in the Eifel. During his studies at both parochial and public schools, Raskob delivered newspapers, worked in seasonal agriculture, participated in local theater and was involved in the Catholic community.

He entered a local business school after his high school graduation but dropped out to support his family through secretarial work following his father's death in 1898.

Raskob was hired in 1901 by Pierre S. du Pont as a personal secretary. In 1911, he became assistant treasurer of DuPont, in 1914 treasurer, and in 1918 president for finance of both DuPont and General Motors. Raskob had been an early investor in General Motors and had engineered DuPont's ownership of 43% of GM, purchased from the financially troubled William C. Durant.

While with GM, he led the creation of GMAC (now Ally Financial), the company that allowed GM dealers to offer installment credit directly to customers. He also promoted the use of standard financial statistics to measure the performance of different operations within a diversified company, primarily through his associate Donaldson Brown.

Raskob held the head financial job at both GM and DuPont until 1928, when he resigned from GM in a dispute with chairman Alfred P. Sloan.

Article Index

Date	Article	Details
25 July 1928	ASSOCIATES OPPOSED RASKOB. Yesterday there were rumors that a stormy session of the directors of General Motors would be held during the day in the course of which one faction would demand Mr. Raskob's resignation.	News Article (text) Publication: The New York Times Dateline: Detroit, Michigan Topics: Topics: General Motors, John Raskob
25 July 1928	RASKOB QUITS POST IN GENERAL MOTORS TO APPEASE CRITICS The resignation of John J. Raskob, who recently became Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, as Chairman of the Finance Committee of the General Motors Corporation, as a member of that committee and as a member of the executive committee, was announced yesterday by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., its President.	News Article (text) Publication: The New York Times Dateline: Detroit, Michigan Topics: Topics: General Motors, John Raskob