About Us
Astor Capital Fund is an institutional and ultra-high net
worth asset management firm.
the Astor Legacy and Spirit
The proud, noble leos sit unfettered by change, unshaken by tragedy, imbued with wealth and power for having risked everything, they gained everything.
John Jacob Astor was one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the 19th century. He dared to dream, and manifested his dreams into reality. He set out as a fur trader, then real estate investor, and amassed his great fortune during his later years in New York.
By the end of his life, Astor had given rise to an American dynasty, setting the bar high for so many entrepreneurial spirits who would follow. The fortune he amassed cemented the Astor legacy as one of the most entrepreneurial dynasties among those first great American wealth families, who set out to achieve the American dream at the start of the 19th century, and succeeded so beautifully.
During their marriage, John Jacob Astor and Sarah Cox Todd had eight children. Among them, John Jacob Astor Jr. and William Backhouse became two of the most well-known. At his death in 1848 John Jacob Astor’s estate was worth more than $20 million. Today, that valuation would translate into greater than $500 million.
Always a philanthropist, he donated $400,000 to build the Astor Library in New York (now part of the famed New York Public Library). Astor left the bulk of his fortune to his son William who became an American business magnate and the direct heir to his fortune. William multiplied his father’s wealth several fold thru lucrative Manhattan real estate acquisitions.
Born on July 17, 1763, in Waldorf, Germany, Astor was not born into wealth. As the son of a butcher, the seed of mercantilism was planted early within him. While he may have innately possessed the attitude of a business mogul as a yearling, there was no predicting that this German immigrant, in his search for a better way of life, would grow to build one of the greatest family fortunes in history.
In his late teens, Astor journeyed to London. By 1784, only a few short years after arriving there, he made the daring decision to venture out on his own. Armed with nothing but twenty-five pounds, and a self-possessed innate confidence, he emigrated to the United States to start a new life.
Heights
John Jacob “Jack” Astor IV, born July 13, 1864, was the youngest of five and the only son of the businessman, collector, and racehorse breeder William Backhouse Astor, Jr. He was the nephew of financier/philanthropist John Jacob Astor III.
John Jacob Astor IV was one of the wealthiest passengers onboard the ill-fated maiden voyage of Titanic. At his passing, it is reported that he was estimated to be among one of the wealthiest men in the world with a net worth of $87 million.
John Jacob “Jakey” Astor VI was born in August 1912, four months after his father’s passing at sea.
Destined to follow in his name sakes’ footsteps, Jakey became an American socialite and successful shipping magnate and would carry on the Astor legacy into the next century.
We specialize in providing independent financial advice and investment management services to a wide array of institutional clients including family offices, foundations, official institutions, municipalities, endowments, and pension plans.
We believe that supreme excellence lies in simplicity and efficiency therefore, in our investment strategies we utilize a straightforward and an uncomplicated approach. With this principle as a leading guide, we help institutions create the best possible decision-making framework through intelligent portfolio design and investment policy guidance.
Capital preservation and long-term growth is paramount to our clients, but we also understand the complex and ever-changing organizational goals, objectives, and spending needs. We are there to provide our clients simple, transparent, and operationally efficient liquidity solutions. Our recourse and non-recourse securities lending platform offers the most flexible, creative, and competitive stock loan solutions in the market.
Whether you need a loan to purchase your dream $300M yacht, complete a $500M marina development, expand a $700M production line or complete a $1B reverse merger, our team can facilitate your goals and objectives.
With the emergence of the fur trade, Astor opened his own shop in 1786. Often, he’d make the harrowing trek to desolate areas in the Great Lakes and Canada, to procure the best fur pelts for his New York store. Within a decade, his efforts paid off. The Astor empire exploded, expanding from New York and the Great Lakes to the American Pacific North West. With his fur business thriving in United States, Astor began trading fur to China in exchange for silk and tea.
Finally, in 1808, he merged his fur businesses into the American Fur Company and set his sights on diversifying his wealth portfolio. It wasn’t long before John Jacob Astor was America’s first multi-millionaire.
During the second part of his life, with the fur trade in decline, he began expanding his wealth by purchasing property throughout the growing new city, New York, which was on the precipice of its own financial birth. His New York acquisitions included five-star hotels, public arts buildings, historic landmarks, and commercial and residential properties. By the end of the century he owned much of the landscape that was New York City and the Astor name became ubiquitous and synonymous with wealth and stature among New York’s most elite.
John Astor’s entrepreneurial spirit and legacy lies within many of today’s great American landmarks. The Astor name is widely-recognized in the Big Apple. Places like Astor Place, The Waldorf Astoria, and the familiar Astoria- a Queens neighborhood just outside Manhattan- are just some of the many Astor-bourne New York landmarks.The famous lions that stand guard at the entrance of the New York Public Library, are affectionately named Leo Astor and Leo Lenox (after their cofounders John Jacob Astor and James Lenox). The proud, noble leos sit unfettered by change, unshaken by tragedy, imbued with wealth and power for having risked everything, they gained everything. It is with that same lively Astor spirit and gentle candor that the two look out with pride over the wealth and life force that abounds the city today.
Astor Capital Fund carries forth the same entrepreneurial, noble spirit rooted in modernity by offering institutional clients and high net-worth individuals unparalleled financial options and services in asset management, securities lending and other financial products. The vision and ideas set by our earliest forefathers do not wane; they are continued by their many descendants.
* In order to become a private client of Astor Capital Fund Ltd, we require a minimum investment of $50 million USD. New clients are accepted by referral only.
We are providing information on a broad range of investment topics on this page for the benefit and edification of our actual and prospective clients. We do not offer all of the products and services referred to herein. We do not maintain licenses to provide specific financial products or services and we have elected not to pursue any licensing that would interfere with or unduly restrict our primary business of originating, funding, and administering private loans to investors that have the knowledge, experience, and resources to understand the benefits and risks of those loans. If and to the extent that we refer to or link to third parties that offer products or services that require licensing, you have the sole responsibility to verify the validity of those licenses and the third party’s authority to offer products and services thereunder.
