Oppenheimer 60th Anniversary - 38

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

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Art Steinmetz: A
Career in Innovation
1989 When Art Steinmetz first arrived

at OppenheimerFunds, it was a much different Company, far smaller than it is today,
and still dominated by legendary early partners like Don Spiro. A more freewheeling atmosphere prevailed at that time. Steinmetz's
first two job interviews, for instance, were
held at Fraunces Tavern and the Bull & the
Bear, respectively - which was just
fine with Steinmetz, who today brews his
own beer.
During one of his initial interviews in 1986,
Steinmetz was asked a fairly straightforward
question: What did he want to be doing in a
decade? "I wanted to show them that I was
serious about being successful very quickly, so
I said I plan to be relaxing on a beach somewhere," he recalled. "Here it is, 23 years later."
That extended tenure makes Steinmetz, now
chief investment officer, fixed income, the
Company's longest-serving portfolio manager.
In large part, Steinmetz has remained at
OppenheimerFunds because its consider38 * OppenheimerFunds:
OppenheimerFundsThe
50th
First
Anniversary
Fifty Years

able growth has yielded a steady stream of
new opportunities. "We kept launching new
funds, and I kept getting to manage them,"
he said. "Being able to constantly vary the
job has been a big challenge for me, and that
has made it fun." Even though the Company
has expanded since he first started, Steinmetz said that its approach to conducting
business has remained constant. "It's about
doing what is right for the investors," he said.
Although Steinmetz has had an important
role in managing a variety of fixed-income
funds, he is perhaps best known for launching
Oppenheimer Strategic Income Fund, which
has become one of the Company's most successful products. Launched in 1989, the Fund
came about when a popular class of fixedincome funds - known as government plus

the debt securities of foreign governments
and companies.
The core concept of Oppenheimer
Strategic Income Fund has remained the
same. "The basic risks that the Fund takes
are credit risk, currency risk, interest rate
risk, and prepayment risk. And some variant
of those is what the Fund is always about,"
Steinmetz said. But within that concept, the
Fund has evolved; Steinmetz is now able
to go anywhere in the world he sees value,
which has increasingly meant investing in
emerging markets.
Steinmetz has seen the Fund weather
many market crises. "Art is better than most
at learning from the exigencies of the world
we live in," said Chief Economist Jerry Webman. "He has seen enough change that he
knows when to stick to the
discipline and when to adjust
his strategies."
It was through some of
those changes that Steinmetz
also discovered how serious
OppenheimerFunds is about
funds - all tanked in the bull market of 1987. its long-term investment philosophy and
Their disappearance meant that the Firm's
its relatively hands-off approach to portfowholesalers needed something new.
lio managers. In 1998 the Russian economy
Steinmetz and his colleagues huddled and endured a financial crisis that caused investdeveloped Oppenheimer Strategic Income
ments Steinmetz had made there to plunge.
Fund, a multisector bond fund that, under
While there was plenty of pressure to pull out
Steinmetz, took an innovative approach
of Russia, Steinmetz counseled patience. "The
by not limiting itself to investing in specific
only way to get back the money we had lost
types of debt securities. Instead, the Fund had in Russia was to stay in Russia," he said.
the flexibility to invest in three sectors: U.S.
Those investments rebounded, and Steingovernment securities; lower-rated, high-yield metz said he learned something about his
securities of U.S. and foreign companies; and
employer through the experience. n

His extended tenure makes
Steinmetz the Company's longestserving portfolio manager.

Oppenheimer 60th Anniversary

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