(equivalent to $ million in ), $96,000 of which was borrowed from his grandfather Isaac Wolfe Bernheim, the founder of a Kentucky distillery.

It became one of the more successful brokerages in the country, eventually building its capital to $1 billion. While Burnham eventually branched out into investment banking, the company's ability to expand was limited by the structure of the investment banking industry of that time. A strict unwritten set of rules