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AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company

James Waddell Alexander, the son of James Waddel Alexander, was the company president at the time of the Hyde costume ball scandal in 1905, in which James Hazen Hyde, the son of the founder and a vice president of the company, was falsely accused through a media smear campaign initiated by Alexander and board directors E. H. Harriman, Henry Clay Frick, J.P. Morgan of charging a fabulous $200,000 costume ball to the company.

Henry Baldwin Hyde

Hyde sought to guarantee that his son James Hazen Hyde would continue the family’s control of the company after his death.

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On the last night of January 1905, James Hazen Hyde (vice president of Equitable from 1899 to 1905) gave one of the most fabulous costume balls of the Gilded Age.

James Hazen Hyde

James Hazen Hyde (1876–1959) was the son of Henry Baldwin Hyde, the founder of The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States.

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Falsely accused through a media smear campaign initiated by board directors E. H. Harriman, Henry Clay Frick, J.P. Morgan and company President James Waddell Alexander of charging the $200,000 party to his company, Hyde soon found himself drawn into a maelstrom of allegations of his corporate malfeasance.

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