John Nuveen emigrated from Germany to Chicago with his family in 1866, when he was two years old. After working for several of the city's merchant houses and real-estate companies as a young man, Nuveen founded his own investment banking firm in Chicago in 1898. The company specialized in the marketing of municipal bonds issued by towns around the Midwest, as well as in Puerto Rico. In 1917, the annual revenues of this small firm passed $300,000. Nuveen expanded during the Great Depression by handling financial instruments issued by new public utilities, and it continued to grow after World War II. By the 1950s, with more than 100 employees, Nuveen had become a national leader in the municipal bond and public finance business. A downturn in the bond market in 1969 caused the company to suffer huge losses, and Nuveen was purchased by Investor's Diversified Services (IDS) of Minneapolis. In 1974, it was acquired by another Minnesota business, an insurance group known as the St. Paul Companies of Minnesota. During the 1990s, as a Chicago-based division of St. Paul, Nuveen began to specialize in the management of assets. At the end of the century, it employed over 400 people in the Chicago area and had annual revenues close to $350 million.

This entry is part of the Encyclopedia's Dictionary of Leading Chicago Businesses (1820-2000) that was prepared by Mark R. Wilson, with additional contributions from Stephen R. Porter and Janice L. Reiff.