Touched by the Big Chill

Touched by the Big Chill

Yesterday was quite a day. I have written about our AC problems in this mid-August heat wave, a problem that got resolved with relative ease. I have also written about the events at Mart-A-Lago and the irony of all the informational overload we as Americans are being asked to take in about all the people from the right that are trying literally and figuratively to flush all evidence down the toilet to hide their misdeeds and malfeasance against the American people and veritably the people of the world. But those were not the most chilling things to happen to me yesterday. At about 1pm I got a call from my friend Larry, who had just landed with his family on some Caribbean island to start a family vacation. Why would Larry be bothering to call me at such a stressful family moment? He was calling to tell me that he had learned from a guy who learned from a guy that our friend Greg had suddenly died on Saturday night. Shortly thereafter, Greg’s wife called me to confirm the same through her sobs.

Greg, as best I can recall, was about 60 years old. I have known him since 1992, so a full thirty of his sixty years. When I met him back then, I was running a big department at Bankers Trust and he worked for a person who worked for a person who reported to me. He was three levels down on the hierarchy, but was identified to me as a very special up and comer in what was otherwise a pretty workaday operational arena. From the moment I first met Greg, he impressed me on many levels. He was bright and personable. He had the ability to be very serious and businesslike, but could very easily let loose and be a fun guy to sit down and share a sandwich and some stories with. That is a harder combination of traits to find than you might expect. He was also good at treading the line of political correctness (he worked directly for one of the toughest and most competent women I have ever had on any of my teams) and still being a regular guy who was not afraid to speak his mind in a polite and respectful way that seemed quite genuine rather than put on.

As I continued on in my career at Bankers Trust, rising through the ranks, I lost touch with Greg for no reason other than that life gets busy and his speciality was less involved in what I was doing in those updated positions. He, it turns out, had left the bank and gone off to London to become the Chief Operating Officer of a smaller, but well-respected merchant banking competitor while I had risen to being on the management committee first of Bankers Trust and then of Deutsche Bank, where I was Chairman and CEO of the asset management business. In the early 2000’s, Greg had done what I did, which was to jump on the entrepreneurial bandwagon just at the moment when the dot-bomb hit the markets and we all were forced to reassess. One day in 2002 he reached out to me and we had lunch. I was in a venture capital company of my own creation (with partners) wondering what was next and he was equally footloose. We met for lunch and talked about ideas and it was as though we hadn’t missed a beat in a decade of financial market wandering. We agreed that he should come and join me and office with me (we had space) and perhaps figure out something to do together.

Very quickly, we hit on an idea in the defined contribution record keeping space and launched a team to go after a possible roll-up LBO opportunity. We gathered a crew of about a half-dozen other pals from the day and started to do the work that was needed to make a compelling pitch for the project. This effort lasted over nine months and we would all go off to lunch each day and mutually agree that if anyone found an interesting job they felt compelled to take, they could leave with no harm or foul to the rest of us. We started to get traction on the deal and actually ended up getting an offer for $80 million of financing from a team of VC’s that included Jamie Dimon’s in-house Banc One VC shop. Everyone, including Greg was very excited. Greg and I had come to understand that he had matured into a very credible manager who would be a perfect fit for my second in command. I felt that he was more like me than any business person I had ever had under my command, and I very much appreciated both his capabilities and his potential and wanted to keep him in the mix and not looking elsewhere.

As fate would have it, the same week that we got the formal offer for the financing, I got two other very attractive CEO offers. When it rains it pours, as they say and in early June, 2003 it was pouring in a good way on me. One of those was with WM Mortgage, the largest subprime origination shop in America. It was owned by Apollo and they desperately wanted me to head it up and take it to its logical sale conclusion in about eighteen months. It would mean moving to California and diving into a mortgage arena that was superheating very quickly and to questionable froth. Becoming one of Apollo’s go-to guys was the real potential prize, but that outcome would depend on the success of what I was able to do with WM, so no guarantees despite tons of potential. Bear Stearns was the other offer. I was asked to become the Chairman and CEO of Bear Stearns Asset Management, the smallish shop in what was one of the roughest, toughest, but highly respected Wall Street shops around, working for a guy who was considered to be one of the fathers of the mortgage-backed securities business. Nothing like three CEO offers in one week to turn a pretty girl’s head.

I chose, with great deliberation and great difficulty, the BSAM job and then had the task of telling the world of my choice. Greg was the first one I told and I made sure to tell him that I would want to have him come to Bear with me as soon as I got a lay of the land. That was scant solace to him as it was to the other team members, who understood and remembered our arrangement, but were none too happy to have the rug pulled out from under them by their leader. The VC’s were even less kind in their assessment of my choice. They could say no to me, but I was not supposed to say no to their money. The Apollo guys were far more professional and they just kept offering me more and better terms for two months trying to get me to change my mind. But I didn’t and so, off to Bear I went.

Within six months, I had successfully recruited Greg and Roger and Rajan to join my team there and even had several of the other team members do project work for me. I’m not sure any of them ever forgot about the rug that had been pulled, but they all had something to show for being on my team, none more than Greg. Greg quickly became my fair-haired boy at BSAM and everyone there knew it. All the attributes that made me like him before, made him an obvious wingman for me at Bear.

When Bear hit the wall in 2007, three guys from my crew spent the entire battle with me in the bunker. Greg was at the lead of that squad. He and I survived to give testimony at length and separately to the U.S. Attorney for the better part of two years. He and Larry and Roger sang a tribute at my and Kim’s wedding. We all left great friends that had been through several wars together. Greg went on to prosper in Jamie Dimon’s world at J.P. Morgan. Just last December, the four of us got together for a breakfast at Pershing Square near Grand Central. It went on until noon and was one of the best four hours I can remember spending with friends. Greg’s infectious laugh and recollection of details of our time in the bunker and in the swamp was a big part of the fun. Just last week I saw on LinkedIn that he was hiring for salespeople for his new venture, so I jokingly applied for the position and we had a chance to exchange laughs one last time. The next day, Greg dropped dead of an unexpected heart attack.

Words do not capture the chill that comes over me when I think about Greg’s passing. He was a fine professional. He was a good man. He was a dear friend and colleague. He will be missed. Carpe Diem.