John D Rockefeller

Born July 8, 1839, Richford, New York, USA died May 23, 1937 in Ormond Beach, Florida), industrialist and philanthropist, founder of Standard Oil Company, the left dominates the oil industry and was among the first major United States.

Rockefeller and his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1853, and six years later he founded his first company, a committee of trade in goods of hay, grain, meat and others. Recognized the commercial potential of increasing oil production in western Pennsylvania in 1860, built his first oil refinery near Cleveland in 1863. Within two years, the largest refinery in the area, then Rockefeller was devoted exclusively to the oil industry.

In 1870, Rockefeller and a few employees, including the Standard Oil Company (Ohio). The emphasis on the economic activities of the Rockefeller Standard prospered and began to buy their competitors, until in 1872, control of almost all the refineries in Cleveland. This has enabled the company to negotiate with the railroads of special rates on oil shipments. The acquired pipelines and terminals, refineries acquired compete in all other cities, and vigorously sought to expand markets in the U.S. and abroad. In 1882, he had a virtual monopoly of oil in the United States. In 1881, Rockefeller and his colleagues, shares of Standard of Ohio and its subsidiaries in other countries under the control of a board of trustees of nine posts, with the head of Rockefeller. She founded the first great American "confidence" and provide a model for other organization monopolies.

The practice of aggressive competition from Standard Oil, which has many as reckless, and the growing hostility toward monopolies, of which standard was the most famous, made a number of industrialized countries at the institutional level antitrust lay down and led to approval by Congress of the Sherman Act Antitrust (1890). In 1892, the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that the Standard Oil Trust a monopoly of a violation of Ohio law that had monopolies. Rockefeller evaded the decision of the solution, trust and transfer their property to companies in other states, with interlocking directorates that are being tested the same nine men in the activities of the subsidiaries. In 1899, these companies back together into a holding company, Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), which continued until 1911, when the U.S. Supreme Court held, in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and therefore illegal.

Source : http://www.biography.com/