Oppenheimer 60th Anniversary - 14

Reprinting of From Opportunity to
Legacy: Celebrating the First Fifty Years

<< PROFILE

born in Berlin and fled the Nazi regime
with his family, first to Switzerland and
then to New York. He graduated from
the City College of New York and joined
Oppenheimer & Co. in 1951 as Max
Oppenheimer's assistant. By 1957, he
was managing partner of the Firm, and
he went on to become president of
Oppenheimer & Co. in 1974 and chairman
from 1979 to 1982. An astute negotiator
as well as a strong administrator, Nash
provided critical leadership during a
period of tremendous growth and made
judicious hires in key parts of the business.
Nash is widely recognized for being ahead
of his time, having helped create the
modern-day hedge fund business. While
at Oppenheimer & Co., Nash and Leon
Levy formed a partnership that lasted for
five decades and became legendary for its
foresight and its returns. n

AN IMPROVING ECONOMY
In the 1950s, everything seemed possible in the
United States. A postwar boom developed, founded
on strong economic fundamentals, technological
advances, and a stock market that finally reflected
optimism. The dollar played a central role in world
trade, and American industry spent billions in
foreign investments. Rather than increasing,
government expenditures remained steady. The
volume of publicly issued Treasury bonds declined
in the early 1950s, freeing more funds for investments in corporate and municipal bonds. The
number of investment bankers doubled between
1950 and 1960.
The public was becoming more familiar with
stocks, though the process was slow in the early years
of the bull market. Some popular radio personalities,
including Walter Winchell, began recommending
stocks as a good investment. This was quite a change
from previous decades, when it seemed all financiers
were popularly viewed as evil. Small shareholdings
grew, and by 1959 the number of retail investors
buying securities doubled. Interestingly, the largest
increase was among women. More than three decades
later, OppenheimerFunds launched its Women &
InvestingSM initiative, a pioneering program designed
to build the confidence of this increasingly important
constituency.

THE OPPENHEIMER FUND
For several years, Levy and his colleagues researched
and developed the innovations they wanted the Firm's
new mutual fund to embody. It was important to
Max Oppenheimer that his Firm stay focused on
protecting customers' capital, so it might seem
contradictory that one of these innovations was
selling short - a concept that at the time seemed
fraught with risk. Although the ability to sell short
bucked the conventional wisdom of what mutual
funds could do, the Firm saw it as a protection for
the customer. By building in flexibility, the Fund
could respond like a successful investor. The Firm
also shaped and supported the concept of investors
becoming more knowledgeable about their own
portfolios, and decided to base the Fund's fee on
performance rather than assets.
In 1957, the plans for the Oppenheimer Fund
took a big step forward with a chance encounter at a
cocktail party where Levy met Edmund Delaney, a
lawyer who had just set up such a mutual fund. Still,
it took more than two years from that encounter to

1956
On February 28, the New York Stock Exchange sees prices advance
sharply, to new highs for the year, after President Eisenhower announces his decision to accept a nomination to a second term.

Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time.

1956

14 * OppenheimerFunds: The First Fifty Years

GETTY IMAGES

Jack Nash
1929-2008 Jack Nash was

Two of the Firm's early hires, Rodney White and
Eugene Fenton, illustrate the wisdom of that approach.
Rodney White was a Navy demolition expert, an athlete,
and a great dancer who paid for his Wharton School
education by playing jazz piano. "The combination of
jazz pianist, dancer, and underwater demolition expert
was exactly what I was looking for in an analyst," wrote
Levy. In fact, White proved to be key to Oppenheimer &
Co.'s growth, and is credited with moving the Firm into
institutional sales.
Eugene Fenton was a student of the psychology
of the markets, an approach that was very forwardthinking at the time. His brilliant insights provided
the Firm with an unusual and helpful perspective.
In 1956, Oppenheimer & Co. became one of the
first investment houses to hire a woman, Frances
Heidt, as a securities analyst.
Oppenheimer's company held itself to high
standards in the workplace. Those who did not share
these values were not hired, or didn't last. Nash once
declared that they would never give their mothers
reason to read anything untoward about them in The
New York Times.
This tradition of hiring intelligent, principled,
creative thinkers has continued to differentiate
OppenheimerFunds from its peers over the years.

Oppenheimer 60th Anniversary

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