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 Rockefeller, who reportedly gave away nearly $2 billion in
his lifetime, died in his sleep of congestive heart failure at
his home in Pocantico Hills, New York, spokesman Fraser Seitel
said in a statement.
One of the few remaining links to the U.S. "gilded" era of
robber barons, he was the son of John D. Rockefeller Jr., who
developed New York's Rockefeller Center, and was the last living
grandson of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard
Oil and the family dynasty. He also embodied an era when
globe-trotting bank chiefs worked with the world's most powerful
politicians.
During his time as head of Chase from 1969 to 1981, Rockefeller
forged such a network of close relationships with governments
and multinational corporations that observers said the bank had
its own foreign policy.
The Rockefeller name came to symbolize unpopular U.S. banking
policies in debtor countries, and Rockefeller was scorned on the
left for working with Chile's Augusto Pinochet and the shah of
Iran.
He also was viewed with anger on the right for pushing to open
trade with China and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The
Trilateral Commission, a group Rockefeller founded in 1973 to
foster relations between North America, Japan and Western
Europe, came to be a regular target of the far-right and
conspiracy theorists who said it was trying to create a
one-world government.
Rockefeller became embroiled in an international incident when
in 1979 he and long-time friend Henry Kissinger helped persuade
President Jimmy Carter to admit the shah of Iran to the United
States for treatment of lymphoma, helping precipitate the Iran
hostage crisis.
Born in Manhattan as the youngest of six siblings, Rockefeller
spent his childhood in New York City and at the family's
estates, and recalled meeting such luminaries as Charles
Lindbergh, Admiral Richard Byrd and Sigmund Freud.
His ties to the internationally famous continued throughout his
adulthood, symbolized by his famed 100,000-card Rolodex, housed
in its own room next to his office in Manhattan's Rockefeller
Center.
The site of the nine-story mansion where he was born, then New
York's largest residence, is now part of the Museum of Modern
Art, which his mother, Abby, helped found in 1929.
Rockefeller collected beetles as a lifelong hobby and also
acquired art - a Mark Rothko painting he bought in 1960 for less
than $10,000 was auctioned for more than $72 million in May
2007.
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His fortune, investments in real estate, share of family trusts and
other holdings were estimated at $3.3 billion in March 2017 by
Forbes magazine. Seitel said Rockefeller had donated nearly $2
billion in his lifetime to organizations including the Museum of
Modern Art in New York and Rockefeller University.
In May 2015, he made a rare public appearance in Maine to mark his
approaching 100th birthday by donating 1,000 acres (405 hectares)
for preservation on exclusive Mount Desert Island.
Rockefeller established several international and philanthropic
associations: the Americas Society, the weighty Trilateral
Commission to promote cooperation between North America, Europe and
Japan, and the New York City Partnership to help the city's poor.
Chase Manhattan grew from a $4.8 billion institution in 1946 when he
joined to a bank with $76.2 billion in assets when he stepped down
in April 1981. But it slipped from its standing then as No. 3 in the
world and was purchased by Chemical Bank of New York in 1996. Today
it is part of JPMorgan Chase & Co.
He published his autobiography, "Memoirs," in 2002 and continued
going to work every day into his 90s.
He remained a lifelong member of the moderate "Rockefeller
Republicans" wing of that party, including his 2006 co-founding of
Republicans Who Care, to support the party's moderates.
Rockefeller earned a degree from Harvard University in 1936 and did
graduate work at the London School of Economics, where he met future
President John F. Kennedy and dated his sister Kathleen. He was
awarded a Ph.D in economics from the University of Chicago in 1940.
From 1940 to 1941 he was secretary to New York Mayor Fiorello
LaGuardia and in 1942 he enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving in
military intelligence in North Africa and France. Rockefeller was
awarded the French Legion of Honor.
Rockefeller's wife, Peggy, died in 1996. They had six children and
10 grandchildren.
(Writing by Patricia Zengerle; additional reporting by Laila
Kearney; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Andrew Hay)
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