Peter Staley had just been diagnosed as HIV-positive when he recognized he had another challenge to confront: He needed to tell his older brother James—better known as Jes (for his initials)—that he was gay and break the news of what was, at the time, effectively a death sentence. This was 1985. Peter was 24. He had recently followed 28-year-old Jes, whom Peter considered seriously homophobic, into a promising career at J.P. Morgan .
So began two brothers’ parallel and extraordinary journeys to leadership. Jes, now 59, rose rapidly through the ranks of J.P. Morgan and post-merger JPMorgan Chase (No. 55 on this year’s Global 500), heading asset management and, later, its investment bank. Peter, now 55, was the first U.S.-government-bond trader on Wall Street to come out as gay and HIV-positive. As a leader of ACT UP, he became one of America’s most famous—or, to some, infamous—LGBT and AIDS activists.
During the height of the ’90s AIDS crisis, Peter was arrested 10 times—including once for protesting Big Pharma’s HIV/AIDS drug prices by chaining himself to the balcony of the New York Stock Exchange and tossing fake $100 bills that said fuck your profiteering. Says Peter today: “If Jes ever had any qualms at J.P. Morgan—I did become one of the most hated people on Wall Street after I shut down the New York Stock Exchange—I never heard it.”
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