The Uncanny Parallel Between J.P. Morgan and Tun Daim
History occasionally produces two men separated by an ocean, a century and vastly different political systems, yet connected by an intriguing similarity: both understood that the power of banking extended far beyond money.
J. Pierpont Morgan was born in 1837, when the United States was still transforming from an agrarian society into an industrial power. Tun Daim Zainuddin was born exactly a century later, when Malaya was still a developing colonial economy. Yet both would eventually operate at moments when their countries were undergoing profound economic transformation.
The comparison is not to suggest that Daim was simply a Malaysian J.P. Morgan. Their circumstances were fundamentally different. Morgan was a private financier whose influence grew through Wall Street. Daim, although a businessman with substantial banking interests, eventually became Finance Minister and therefore possessed something Morgan never did have direct access to the machinery of government.
That difference may be precisely what makes the comparison so fascinating.
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