He sued the Exchange for $1 million in a futile attempt to recover. Ryan exited the Exchange, and relinquished the family seat, giving it over to his son before the family sold it outright. Useless as collateral, the shares became a burden. Ryan charged that the short sellers (some of whom were well-connected members of the Exchange) had used their influence to force the shares into the over the counter market, though he could not prove this. The win was actually a loss for Ryan, as Stutz had been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange he was left with no place to sell his shares. But if Ryan thought he had outsmarted his adversaries at the exchange, he was dead wrong. A settlement, however, resulted in short sellers agreeing to replace their shares at $550. At the same time, the short sellers could leave open their positions, resulting in a standoff. There was essentially no limit to the price it could reach, since there was virtually none available on the open market. Ryan’s net worth soared with it as the stock moved from $100 to $391 a share. The price soared as short sellers tried to cover their position. Once people realize the situation, the chase to fill the void by buying shares pushes the price through the roof.Īnd that’s exactly what happened to Stutz. That’s a situation in which people taking a short position have pledged more stock than is actually available. It then became clear the short sellers were in trouble because a short squeeze had developed. He controlled virtually all the available company stock. The short-selling on Stutz mounted, and Ryan continued to increase his positions. York Harbor Summer Resident Allen Ryan Famously Cornered the Stock for Stutz Motor Co. Short sellers saw a chance to give Ryan a beating. Others, however, viewed the company as shaky. Ryan began buying the company’s stock before the decade began. The iconic Stutz brand put the roar in the roaring 20s. His good fortune crumbled in 1920, however, when he cornered the market for the stock in one of the era’s prestige companies – Stutz Motor Car. The mention that “Ryan is buying” or that a stock was one of “Ryan’s stocks” was enough to move a stock quickly up in price. He had holdings in steel companies, oil and a wide array of industries. That independence then grew an icy patina when his father remarried a young woman 12 days after he became a widower.īy 1919, Allen Ryan was a famously successful financier. But he always insisted on independence from his father. Allen held the family seat on the stock exchange by the age of 25. ![]() tobacco and transport magnate, Thomas Ryan. Born May 5, 1880, Allen Ryan was the son of U.S. The Ryans were already well-known to America by 1923. Sarah Tuck Ryan, a Philadelphia socialite from an oil fortune, whose marriage to Allen Ryan left her both embarrassed and apparently somewhat poorer and,Īllen Ryan, a Wall Street financier with a one-time wealth of $30 million, a family seat on the New York Stock Exchange, and a knack for making the market turn out profits for his investors.Īllen Ryan’s misfortune set the stage for the scandal. George Maxwell, an expatriate Englishman, publisher, president and a founder of the newly formed American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP): ![]() But it was the hottest story of the summer no matter which part of York you came from. ![]() As it unfolded in real time, it ensnared some of New York’s biggest names. The story gave the world one of the all-time great beach reads. In the scandal that erupted, the husband claimed the lover had sent letters to the husbands of 40 wealthy East Coast socialites-each of whom he was having affairs with. ![]() Her husband found out when he received a poison pen letter, allegedly from the lover. One of York Harbor’s socialite residents allegedly had an affair with the pioneering founder of ASCAP, which licenses the rights of musical composers. Remnants of that past still exist in York as a microcosm of period resort architecture. Between the 1870s and 1920s, the scenic slice of Maine’s coast functioned as a fashionable summer resort for wealthy East Coast families. York Harbor then was much different than it is today. For a few days in 1923, the entire world focused on York Harbor as home to the love nest that figured in the biggest and juiciest society scandal of the day.
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