Du Pont, Pierre

Du Pont, Pierre (1870–1954), corporate executive.Born near Wilmington, Delaware, Pierre du Pont graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1890. In 1902 he and two cousins purchased the century‐old family firm, E.I. du Pont de Nemours Powder Company, from their elders. Through mergers and acquisitions, he and his cousin Coleman du Pont soon transformed the small‐scale and competitive explosives industry, gaining control of 70 percent of the industry's productive capacity. Concentrating production in a small number of large works, they also established an international marketing and distribution network, a central purchasing office, and a research and development department. As treasurer (1904), du Pont developed new methods of asset counting, capital allocation, financial forecasting, and determining the rate of return on investment—techniques that became standard procedures in American industry. Under his leadership as president (1915) and board chairman (1919–1940), the firm produced a full line of chemicals.

Du Pont also played a central role in the General Motors Corporation, of which he became board chairman in 1915. During the recession of 1920, the DuPont Company acquired a substantial block of GM stock to save the company from bankruptcy. As president (1920) and board chairman (1926–1929), Pierre du Pont, with his deputy Alfred Sloan, devised a creative organizational structure and marketing strategy to produce motor vehicles “for every purse and person”—a strategy that made GM a market leader worldwide. As the key creator of what became America's largest chemical company and its largest automobile enterprise, du Pont pioneered in establishing methods of twentieth‐century corporate management.
See also Automotive Industry; Business; Chemical Industry; Foreign Relations: The Economic Dimension; Industrialization; Mass Marketing; Multinational Enterprises.

Bibliography

Alfred D. Chandler Jr. and and Stephen Salsbury , Pierre S. du Pont and the Making of the Modern Corporation, 1971.
Joseph Frazier Wall , Alfred I. du Pont, The Man and His Family, 1990.

Alfred D. Chandler Jr.