Morty Davis
Chairman
J. Morton Davis is the owner and Chairman of D.H. Blair Investment Banking Corp., a full-service investment banking and venture capital firm established in 1904, and is the driving force behind the firm’s outstanding performance over the years.
Few people on Wall Street possess Mr. Davis’ breadth and depth of financial experience. Fewer still are as successful.
Investment banker, entrepreneur, investment analyst, economist, and venture capitalist, Morty Davis is Wall Street personified. He joined Blair in 1961, rose to the presidency in 1967, and became the sole shareholder in 1972.
Mr. Davis is a tough businessman, but it is precisely this aggressiveness that explains his success.
Many of the companies financed by Mr. Davis over the years have returned significant profits to investors, created countless jobs, and added immeasurable productivity to the economy.
Over his career, Mr. Davis has helped over 400 start-up and early-stage companies raise more than $3 billion in capital. Over the years, Mr. Davis has funded Nobel prize winners and the developer of the Polio vaccine, among many other leading entrepreneurs and business pioneers in pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, medical devices, and computers. As the majority shareholder in News Communications Inc., Mr. Davis helped start and grow The Hill, a highly successful and renowned daily newspaper and digital media company based in Washington, DC focusing on politics, policy, business, and international relations.
And when Mr. Davis provides entrepreneurs the funds needed to launch or grow their companies—not a year later, not a month later, not even a week later—but the very next day, they are out hiring people and buying capital equipment! That, in turn, generates business and jobs at the supplying companies – indeed true capitalism!
Mr. Davis is the recipient of several prestigious awards and honors, including a tribute by President Ronald Reagan for Mr. Davis’ support of the Creative Arts Rehabilitation Center, the Republican Party’s Distinguished Service Award, the Intrepid Museum’s Freedom Award, and the Synagogue Council of America’s Covenant of Peace Award.
Mr. Davis has served on the Boards of Research! America, Foundation for Future Generations, and the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge. He also has served on the Board of Trustees of Yeshiva University and on the Board of its Sy Syms School of Business.
In 2011, the International Center for Autism Research & Education honored Mr. Davis’ lifetime of achievements in a special tribute luncheon in the U.S. Capitol.
In 1971, Mr. Davis and his wife made a gift to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine to endow annual merit-based medical scholarships for needy first-year students.
Over the years, this endowment has grown, and recently, three worthy medical students have been recipients of this generous scholarship.
Mr. Davis has written two business books, the most recent of which, “From Hard Knocks to Hot Stocks,” received flattering reviews from some of America’s most prominent business and economic leaders, including Senator Bob Dole, Alan “Ace” Greenberg, Carl Icahn, Donald Trump, and Larry King. Mr. Davis’ earlier book, “Making America Work.“
Again, it was acclaimed by several notable economic scholars and praised by President Ronald Reagan in a tribute to Mr. Davis, whom President Reagan recognized for his long career of hard work and his support of the creative arts.
Mr. Davis has also recently published a book on achieving happiness in life entitled “Happiness Guaranteed or Your Misery Back.”
A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Mr. Davis received his B.A. in Economics, magna cum laude, from Brooklyn College in 1957 and his M.B.A., with distinction, from the Harvard Graduate School of Business in 1959.
He resides in the New York metropolitan area and is never very far from his daughters, many grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.