Oppenheimer 60th Anniversary - 30

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

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OppenheimerFunds Operations in Denver
interested in buying the Hamilton funds. Spiro, Leon
Levy, and OMC money manager Steve Roberts immediately flew to Colorado, where they met with the
boards of IT&T and Hamilton. "I negotiated primarily
with Don Spiro and Steve Roberts," said Hamilton
chairman and CEO Jim Swain, who concluded that
OMC was the best fit among the 28 fund companies
vying for Hamilton. Swain proved instrumental in
convincing IT&T to strike a deal with OMC, which
took ownership of the Hamilton funds and the
Hamilton Management Corporation transfer agent
in September 1975.
OMC and Hamilton made an unusual pair in
some ways. Oppenheimer Management Corp.'s size
and fast-paced New York culture contrasted with
Hamilton's smaller scale and laid-back Western atmosphere. Carol Neverdahl, who started with Hamilton
in 1965 and recently retired as manager of the Denver
OppenheimerFunds walk-in center, recalled that
most of the employees lived just down the street.
"When we merged with Oppenheimer Management
Corp., it was an eye-opener," she said. "Suddenly we
were part of a very worldly corporation with so much
more to offer."
From the start, employees in both locations
worked to bridge the divide between the two different cultures. When members of Oppenheimer
Management Corp.'s board of directors would visit,
they would throw parties to help employees of the
New York and Denver offices get to know each other.
Hamilton's systems also were upgraded to bring them
in line with OMC's.
Oppenheimer Management Corp. continued
to base the Hamilton funds out of Denver. In 1978,
the Firm added broker-dealer subsidiary Centennial
Capital Corporation (today Centennial Asset Management Corporation) to act as advisor and distributor of the new Centennial Trusts - groundbreaking money market funds created for broker-dealer
sweep accounts.
OMC's Denver operations evolved over time,
adding new funds and expanding existing ones.
Neverdahl opened the first walk-in center in the early
1980s, and it quickly became very busy, thanks to the
popularity of the Oppenheimer Money Market Fund.

Jim Swain was
chairman and
CEO of Hamilton
Funds when it
was acquired by
Oppenheimer
Management
Corporation.

"The prime rate was 20%, and our fund was paying
about 18%," recalled Neverdahl. "The elevator door
would open and there would be anywhere from 12 to
15 people interested in investing in the Oppenheimer
Money Market Fund."
Meanwhile, the Hamilton Management transfer
agent was renamed Oppenheimer Shareholder Services (OSS, later OppenheimerFunds Services). "We
did all the accounting, finance, and data processing
for the mutual funds out of Denver," said Swain. "It
was a big complex."
This was a period of enormous growth for
Oppenheimer Management Corp., thanks largely to
the immense popularity of the IRA. Oppenheimer
Shareholder Services soon found itself flooded with
IRA applications and other records, and its outdated
data-processing systems couldn't keep up. One employee described the early 1980s systems as "cumbersome, not user-friendly, and undependable," noting
that the computers frequently crashed, often for
hours at a time, and required overnight updating. "To
correct something as simple as the misspelling of a
shareholder's name could take three days," she said.
To fix the problems, Swain and Spiro began courting Sam Freedman, who recently had left Ross Perot's
Electronic Data Systems and was being groomed to
take the reins at First National Bank in Fort Worth.
But the Texas-based Freedman repeatedly rebuffed
Swain and Spiro, at one point even providing them
with a list of other potential candidates. They kept
after him, however. Spiro, ever the salesman, even
bought a pair of Tony Lama cowboy boots and wore
them to a business dinner in Texas to try to persuade
Freedman to come on board. Eventually Freedman

"We did all the accounting, finance, and data processing for
the mutual funds out of Denver - it was a big complex."

JIM SWAIN

CREDIT: TK

1975

By the mid-1970s, Oppenheimer
Management Corp., the predecessor to OppenheimerFunds, Inc., was hoping to broaden its fund
lineup, a quest that led to Denver. But the story of
OppenheimerFunds' presence in Colorado goes back
to 1931, with the founding of Hamilton Management
Corporation, transfer agent and investment advisor
for the Hamilton Fund (now called Oppenheimer
Equity Fund) as well as the Hamilton Growth Fund
and Hamilton Income Fund (later combined into a
fund now called Oppenheimer Capital Income).
Then, in 1965, Hamilton was acquired by International Telephone & Telegraph. Five years later, IT&T
broadened its presence in the financial industry by
purchasing the Hartford Group. Antitrust regulators
took a dim view of the sprawling conglomerate's
newly expanded reach, and forced IT&T to divest
itself of Hamilton Management.
So Don Spiro jumped when IT&T mergers and
acquisitions chief Stan Luke asked if the Firm was

Oppenheimer 60th Anniversary

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