Frederick L. Ehrman

Frederick Louis Ehrman (January 3, 1906 – December 20, 1973) was an American banker who served as president, chief executive and chairman of Lehman Brothers. Early life Ehrman was born in San Francisco, California in 1906 into "one of the Bay area's most distinguished pioneer families." He was the only child of Mina Louise (née Schwabacher) Ehrman (1878–1958) and Albert Leopold Ehrman (1870–1961). His father operated his own brokerage firm and twice served as president of the San Francisco Stock Exchange, serving from 1920 to 1922 and again from 1931 to 1933. His parents commissioned Willis Jefferson Polk of Willis Polk & Company to build them a house at 2880 Broadway in Pacific Heights, San Francisco (later owned by Gordon Getty). His paternal uncle, Sidney Meyer Ehrman, was a lawyer who co-founded the Heller, Powers & Ehrman law firm with his brother-in-law Emanuel S. Heller. Both Ehrman and Heller were sons-in-law of The Nevada Bank president Isaias W. Hellman (himself the brother-in-law of Mayer Lehman, one of the three founding brothers of the investment bank Lehman Brothers). His cousin Sidney Heller "Tod" Ehrman died of a brain infection in London in 1930 at age 24, and another cousin, Esther Hellman Ehrman, married Claude Lazard (a grandson of Simon Lazard, founder of Lazard Frères & Co.). His maternal grandfather was Louis Schwabacher, a pioneering Bavarian-born Jewish merchant. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1927.