In 1981, Shearson was acquired by American Express and operated as a subsidiary of the financial services company before being merged with Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb in 1984 and E.F. Hutton & Co. in 1988.

[3] Shearson Lehman Hutton was the result of the combination of several Wall Street firms over a 25-year period beginning in the early 1960s that included Lehman Brothers, Kuhn Loeb, E.F. Hutton, Hayden Stone & Co., Shearson, Hammill & Co., Loeb, Rhoades & Co., Hornblower & Company, and Cogan, Berlind, Weill & Levitt, which ultimately came together under the ownership of American Express.

Shearson, who was raised in Ontario, Canada began his career as an auditor for the Wisconsin Central Railroad before taking a position in the steel industry in 1898.

The firm was originally headquartered in the Empire Building at 71 Broadway in New York City and maintained another main office in Chicago.

[8] In the early 1970s, Shearson faced financial difficulties as did many of the venerable Wall Street firms in the midst of the 1973–1974 stock market crash.

[10] Weill's next major target in 1979 was another prominent investment bank, Loeb, Rhoades, Hornblower & Co., which like Shearson had been suffering financial difficulties and was looking for a potential acquiror.

The merger with Loeb Rhoades was more notable for introducing a stronger investment banking business to Shearson.

In mid-1981, it purchased Sanford I. Weill's Shearson Loeb Rhoades, the second largest securities firm in the United States to form Shearson/American Express.

With capital totalling $250 million at the time of its acquisition, Shearson Loeb Rhoades trailed only Merrill Lynch as the securities brokerage industry's largest firm.

Weill would return to building a large financial services company of his own, which would become Citigroup and would go on to acquire the core Shearson brokerage business that he had built in the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1984, Shearson/American Express purchased the 90-year-old Investors Diversified Services, bringing with it a fleet of financial advisors and investment products.

[15][16] In early 1987, an internal Hutton probe revealed that brokers at an office in Providence, Rhode Island, laundered money for the Patriarca crime family.

By the end of November 1987, Hutton had lost $76 million, largely due to massive trading losses and margin calls that its customers could not meet.

On December 3, 1987, Hutton agreed to a merger with Shearson Lehman in a $1 billion ($2,681,898,067 today) deal.

At the same time, the combined firm suffered dwindling business from individual investors as its focus was shifted to large corporate transactions.

[19] The Hutton brand was used until 1990, when American Express abandoned the name and the business was renamed Shearson Lehman Brothers.

When Harvey Golub became CEO of American Express in 1993, he negotiated the sale of Shearson's retail brokerage and asset management business to Primerica.

[3] In 1994, American Express spun off of the remaining investment banking and institutional businesses as Lehman Brothers.

The following is an illustration of the company's major mergers and acquisitions and historical predecessors (this is not a comprehensive list):[22] American Express(est.