James Hyde

At the age of 23, James Hazen Hyde inherited a majority interest in the Equitable Life Assurance Society, a fortune worth over $7 billion in 21st century dollars, and with assets six times the gold reserves of the US Treasury at the time. He would become one of the most important businessmen in the country, being named to 46 corporate boards, but his corporate shenanigans would eventually become responsible for a complete overhaul of the insurance industry. In 1902, Hyde formed James Hazen Hyde & Associates which brokered trades between Wall Street and the Equitable, allowing him to shuttle money back and forth to himself at a profit, not illegal in that era. Hyde spent money lavishly and in late January 1905 he threw a costume ball which was rumored to have cost $200,000, a huge sum for the era. The resultant scandal caused the Board of Directors of Equitable to throw Hyde off the board and remove him from the vice-presidency, and he was forced to cash out his shares. A devout Francophile, he escaped the scandal by moving to France. He has often visited France previously, where he met Pierre de Coubertin, who thought the wealthy Harvard grad would be a good fit for the IOC. Hyde’s interest in Olympic matters was miniscule. He spent five years (1903-08) as an IOC Member but never attended an IOC Session.

Hyde remained in France for 26 years, earning numerous honors on the Continent for his philanthropic ways, including serving on the executive board of the French Legion of Honor and receiving the Grand Cross of the Legion, on the board of the American Friends of Versailles, being elected a member of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, and serving with the Royal Society of Arts in London. He later returned to the United States and was also given several honorary degrees in his native country, including at Princeton, and Skidmore, and he also received an honorary doctorate from Rennes University in France in 1920.