Word: lebaron
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...exempt fund business, which includes pension and profit-sharing plans, has ballooned since 1975 from 20% to 37%, ahead of the banks' 35% and the insurance companies' 28%. Upstart independent firms Like Alliance Capital Management in New York City, Capital Guardian Trust in Los Angeles and LeBaron's Batterymarch Financial Management in Boston have become serious challengers to such pension-fund giants as Prudential Insurance, Equitable Life Assurance Society and Citibank. One example of the trend: General Motors plans to reduce the portion of its $17 billion of pension funds handled by banks. The company says...
...gnomes guarding caves full of gold, the bankers tended to favor bonds and the safest stocks for retirement funds. During the inflation-plagued 1970s, however, many corporations, unions and local governments became unhappy with the returns they were getting on pension money. Increasingly, they turned to mavericks like LeBaron, who promised to outperform the banks by buying and selling a broad range of securities more aggressively...
...Dean LeBaron, 49. President and sole owner of Batterymarch, LeBaron is a notorious contrarian, who loves unloved stocks. He buys securities when they are cheap, hoping that they will stage big comebacks. In early 1982 his firm invested $500 million in 250 companies threatened by bankruptcy because, he said, "those that did not go broke would more than make up for those that did." He was right: during the economic recovery and bull market, the $500 million has grown by 93% to almost $1 billion...
More than other money managers, LeBaron has tried to make stock picking a science. He and his staff test out the performance of hypothetical investment plans on a cluster of Prime computers. Once a strategy is chosen and programmed into a machine, the electronic wizard chooses what stocks to buy and sell without further human meddling. Says LeBaron: "Other companies use computers as adjuncts to people. We've turned that concept around and put the computer in charge." The computer has done well, beating the Standard & Poor's 500 index by an annual average of 6% over...
...weekends, the free-spirited LeBaron gets away from the intense pressure of his work by speeding through the countryside around Boston on a Honda motorcycle or one of his two Yamahas. He may be the only pension-fund manager to have read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance...