Well-Known Investor John Angelo Dies
January 04 2016 - 1:30AM
Dow Jones News
John M. Angelo, who co-founded Angelo, Gordon & Co. and ran
the New York investment firm for nearly three decades, died Friday
after suffering from cancer. He was 74 years old.
Mr. Angelo was widely known on Wall Street and in New York
society. He was on the board at auction house Sotheby's, a longtime
friend of former Walt Disney Co. chief Michael Eisner and a
neighbor to many of Manhattan's richest and most famous at the
Dakota apartment building.
He also was husband of Judy Hart Angelo, an award-winning
songstress who co-wrote the theme to "Cheers" and other well-known
television shows.
Yet his eponymous firm has kept a relatively low profile even
though it manages $26 billion for clients and has 400-some
employees stationed throughout the world.
A former arbitrage trader, Mr. Angelo founded the firm in 1988
with Michael Gordon, writing up a business plan that called for a
$75 million first fund. Mr. Gordon oversaw investing, while Mr.
Angelo was chief executive and handled relationships with
investors.
Angelo Gordon went on to become a major player in
distressed-debt and real-estate investing, while also running a
private-equity business that has acquired midsize companies ranging
from the Japanese-food restaurant chain Benihana to niche
lenders.
"We wanted to have the highest ethical standards, attract the
most talented investment professionals and to help our clients be
as successful as possible," Mr. Gordon wrote in a note to employees
announcing his partner's death. "We had no idea how successful we
would be, and our clients would be, by adhering to those simple
objectives."
The two men had decamped from L.F. Rothschild Holdings Inc., a
merchant-banking operation that became a top underwriter of initial
public offerings in the 1980s but was felled in the 1987
stock-market crash.
Mr. Angelo found his way to leadership roles at L.F.
Rothschild—and later at his own firm—through what he characterized
in a 2015 commencement speech at his alma mater St. Lawrence
University as a series of breaks.
They included a career-launching assignment on the bond floor of
the New York Stock Exchange in 1967 and his eventual recruitment to
the arbitrage desk at Bear Stearns.
In recent years, Mr. Angelo sought to line up lucky breaks for
St. Lawrence graduates, creating a program to get finance students
Wall Street internships after he learned that many from the upstate
school had never been to New York City, his hometown.
He is survived by his wife and three children, Jack, a
television producer; Kate, a screenwriter; and Jesse, who is chief
executive and publisher of the New York Post, which, like The Wall
Street Journal, is owned by News Corp.
Write to Ryan Dezember at ryan.dezember@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 04, 2016 01:15 ET (06:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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