“Life ain’t no merry go round, it’s a roller coaster.”
Bon Jovi

During my time working at my previous job at M.R Weiser & Co., I developed a “work friendship” with the Head of Human Resources, Larry Rutovsky. At the same time that I was making the decision to pursue other opportunities, Larry left Weiser to join and help launch a new executive recruiting firm called Benson Associates. He reached out to me as he knew that I was contemplating a move. I had no idea what my next move would be, so I welcomed the opportunity to speak with someone who was somewhat objective, as objective as a recruiter can be given his line of work. Larry was a friend, and he was, as I knew he would be, open and honest with his ideas and his opinions.

To begin the next leg of my career journey I met Larry in his office after work one day to have our first of what turned out to be, numerous “career counseling” discussions. At one of these sessions, he introduced me to one of his partners, Harlan. After hearing that I was interested in pursuing a new direction in my career, Harlan told us about one of his clients.  He had a friend who was the “head trader”, (turns out he was the only trader), at a start-up hedge fund called First Security Management.  The hedge fund was looking for a controller. I was game, so we set up a meeting with the trader, Mordecai (“Morty”).

Hedge Funds

A few notes of explanation before I continue…..

I was familiar with the functions of a controller, but when Harlan described this position, he used a phrase that was foreign to me; “hedge fund”.

A controller is responsible for all accounting related functions of an organization and usually reports to a Chief Financial Officer, (“CFO”), who is responsible for managing the financial needs of the organization. Other than this very high-level textbook definition, I had no idea what the responsibilities of a controller of a hedge fund would entail for the simple fact that I did not know what a hedge fund was, nor did I have any knowledge of its business purpose.

This was the summer of 1987, and since then the term “hedge funds” has become a common phrase in the lexicon of the investment industry. However, in 1987 this was not a familiar phrase to most people, and even today – 36 years later – I imagine the phrase is still opaque to many people. This is not surprising as the phrase “hedge funds” has become inappropriately ubiquitous when describing any type of investment fund regardless of strategy or structure.  Here is a quick, I promise, background.

Hedge funds were not new in 1987. They had been around since the structure was first widely used in the late 1970s, and investment funds, in general, have been around even longer. It is not uncommon for individuals who have money to invest but have no knowledge of how to invest to seek out professional advisors. These investment advisors are given the responsibility of investing their client’s money using a variety of strategies. In some instances, these investment advisors, also known as investment managers, will form a company for the purpose of combining their clients’ accounts into one larger account to more effectively and efficiently manage the funds. For example, making one bigger trade for one account is cheaper, sometimes much cheaper, and more efficient than executing several trades for multiple clients. In the latter half of the 1970s one such investment manager, A.W. Jones, not only created one of these investment funds but also came up with a strategy that would possibly shield the portfolio from substantial losses by utilizing, what he called, “hedging” techniques.  Most of us have heard the phrase “hedging your bet” whereby you try to minimize any potential negative impact of whatever action you are taking. A.W. Jones developed a strategy that could potentially “hedge” against the impact of a negative change in the stock market. Therefore, he called his investment fund a “hedge fund”.  Many other investment managers began to deploy these hedging techniques which were quite effective in reducing, (note: not eliminating), potential losses.

Ironically, in today’s sensationalist news reporting, hedge funds have become synonymous with high-flying, risk-taking and irresponsible trading strategies which are the exact opposite of the meaning of the original concept.

At the time of my interview with First Security Management, I knew none of this.

Morty and Bob

I had two interviews with First Security. The first one was with the head trader, Morty. It was eventful as it revealed the very important fact that I had no idea about the inner workings of the world of investments, the responsibilities of a hedge fund controller, or even the basic concepts of stocks, bonds, or any financial instrument. I was not the ideal candidate by any stretch of the imagination. I would go so far as to say that I was unqualified for the position. For whatever reason, Morty saw some potential, and he suggested that I meet the General Partner and Founder of First Security, Bob Denison. Even with all of those negatives, I did have something going for me that maybe other candidates did not….I was cheap.

My salary at that time with M.R. Weiser was $47,000, which was typical for a Manager at a small accounting firm in 1987. However, a typical salary for a controller of an investment fund was closer to $75,000. I knew I was not going to be offered anywhere near $75,000, so when it came time to negotiate my starting salary at First Security my goal was to ask for an amount greater than $50,000. $50,000 was an important milestone for me. A few years before 1987 I had a conversation with my old college roommate and good friend, Scott, where we made the vow that we would “make our first $50,000” before turning 30 years old. As silly as this may sound, at 29 years old, this was my motivation to request $51,000.

The second interview was with Morty and Bob at the Broadway Diner which was located downstairs from First Security’s offices in 375 Park Avenue in Manhattan. The lunch and conversation were very brief. It was obvious to me that the lunch was Morty’s idea as Bob seemed uninterested in even being there. He did ask me some questions, however, and I recall feeling very uneasy about my answers. Sometime after I began working at First Security Morty admitted that he had to convince Bob to hire me. Morty saw potential while Bob saw my lack of investment accounting experience, my youth, and, quite frankly, my lack of style and panache, (both traits were important to Bob). However, I was a Certified Public Accountant, my accounting skills were solid, and as I said above, I was cheap. In September of 1987, I became the first controller of First Security Management Inc.

An Early Sign?

First Security was formed early in 1987 as a result of a falling out between college buddies. Bob Denison, Dick Nye and George Baker met at Harvard Business School where each graduated with their Master in Business Administration degrees in 1964.

George F. Baker III was the great-grandson of George Fisher Baker. The latter was known as the “Dean of American Banking”.  At the time of his death in 1931 George Fisher Baker was considered the 3rd richest person in the United States, behind Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller. Baker was a co-founder of the First National Bank of the City of New York, which we now know as Citibank.

The top academic honor at Harvard Business School is the “Baker Scholar” designation given to the top 5% of the graduating MBA class. Coincidentally, all three, Baker, Denison and Nye were awarded the designation of Baker Scholar. After graduation, they remained friends. Dick Nye began working for the Baker Family Office managing the significant wealth of the descendants of the co-founder of Citibank. He eventually became a Managing Partner. A few years later in 1968 the three college friends went into business together and formed a limited partnership called First Security Management Company. At its peak, together with another company they formed called Baden Management Advisors, they managed, I believe, in excess of $200 million which in the 1970s and 1980s was considered a very large investment management company.

As I mentioned above, at some point in the mid-1980s the three amigos had a falling out. It was so serious that they determined that they could no longer work together, or as it was told to me, Baker and Nye would no longer work with Denison. The settlement of this “divorce” resulted in Denison keeping the names First Security Management and Baden Advisors along with all of the clients, (i.e., investors), that he had introduced to the firm while Baker and Nye formed a new company, called Baker Nye Advisors keeping all the other clients not going with Denison, including Baker’s wealth.

I knew none of this history when I accepted the job as controller of First Security. All I knew was that I was about to begin a new leg of my career journey and couldn’t be happier, although admittedly a bit nervous. Little did I know or realize that the decision to accept this offer would have a significant and profound impact on the rest of my career and life.

After accepting the offer and submitting my resignation to M.R. Weiser & Company, Larry and Harlan asked me to stop by their offices to celebrate. They broke out a bottle of Dewars White Label scotch and poured three glasses even though I told them that I never had scotch before. They said something like, “We can’t celebrate with Budweiser!”. The first taste was a bit rough, but then, as the saying goes, the rest is history.

Baptism by Fire

I started working at First Security in mid-August of 1987 and stayed for about 3 1/2 years. It was an eventful 3 1/2 years. In my first month, Morty quickly became my mentor and teacher. He began to teach me the very basics of the investment industry, and we quickly became friends. That friendship would survive many trials.

On October 19, 1987, one month into my Wall Street career, the stock market crashed. That day became known as Black Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, (“DJIA”), declined almost 23% in one day which was, and is, the biggest one-day percentage decline in stock market history. The DJIA is an average of stock prices of 30 of the most influential companies whose stocks trade on the New York Stock Exchange. The average is considered a bellwether for the rest of the stock market. A 23% decline is catastrophic. This is more than twice the decline that occurred on October 24, 1929, (“Black Thursday”), which was one of the causes of the infamous “Great Depression”. Following Black Monday in 1987, the country went into an economic recession, but due to the banking and investment regulations that were enacted after the 1929 crash, in addition to better technology and communication capabilities, the 1987 crash did not result in the cataclysmic economic collapse that occurred in 1929. That said, it did take more than 2 years for the market to fully recover.

As momentous an event as it was, after only one month on the job, I truly did not understand its implications. What I did know and learn is what I witnessed in the offices of First Security. The week before Black Monday Morty was on his honeymoon in Hawaii. Unfortunately for him, the market became very volatile on Friday, October 16th and he was constantly on the phone with Bob throughout the trading day. In hindsight, I was very impressed by the decisions they made on that Friday. While Monday’s decline was massive, Friday’s decline was large as well. By the end of the day Friday the DJIA declined over 100 points which was the first time ever that there was over a 100-point decline in one day. Bob and Morty recognized early in the trading day that this could be a really bad day in the market and executed certain trades to protect the value of our portfolio. This was, in essence, what “hedge fund” strategies are supposed to do. They were very successful. If I remember correctly, we even made money on that Friday.

When we arrived at work the following Monday, (Morty was back from his honeymoon), we were all aware that the global markets in Asia and Europe had already sustained very large losses prior to the markets opening in New York. All eyes across the world were on the New York Stock Exchange to see how bad it was going to be.  However, Bob and Morty felt confident that the way they positioned our portfolio on Friday would protect us from any large losses, and they were correct….until they weren’t. Of course, I had been reading all the articles that were in the weekend papers predicting doom and gloom and I wondered if my fledgling Wall Street career was going to be over before it even started. First Security was a relatively small firm as Denison was only able to bring over a small portion of the clients when he split with Baker and Nye. We did not have much room for error. Morty’s and Bob’s confidence did help calm my anxiety, at least at first. What occurred next, however, taught me a great lesson about over-confidence regarding the vagaries of the stock market, or anything, for that matter, that you don’t control.

Bob and Morty huddled behind Morty’s desk watching the trading unfold on the “Quotron” terminal. Quotron was a sophisticated, by 1987 standards, computer terminal that showed “real-time” stock prices including indices such as the DJIA. As the morning trading unfolded it was apparent we were in for a bad day on the stock market. The DJIA declined by over 10% by 12:30. Again, because of Bob and Morty’s decisions on Friday we were weathering the losses.

For about 30 minutes following the 10% decline, the market started to recover and regained about 1/2 of the losses that occurred in the morning. Morty and Bob came to an unfortunate agreement that the worst was behind us and that the market was going to rebound. They decided to reverse the trades they executed on Friday and even executed different trades that made our portfolio further exposed to the market. In poker parlance, they went all-in, putting all the money in the pot. Within a very short time, they realized their error as the market went into free fall. By the end of the day, we had lost a substantial amount of our investors’ money.

The tension in the office was palpable. In a naïve attempt to lighten the mood, I went into Morty’s office and removed all sharp objects from his desk. The intense glare I got back from Morty told me that my joke was not well received. However, there were reports that traders and investors committed suicide because they had “lost everything” that day, so maybe my attempt at comic relief wasn’t completely ill-conceived.

The market did recover, and First Security did as well. While our performance would have been much better without the October 19th debacle, 1987 was not a terrible year for us. I was paid my first Wall Street bonus at the end of that year. It was $12,000, almost 25% of my base salary. I was thrilled! After a very intense and active introduction to the world of finance, I settled into what would become my ultimate career.

“Partnership Accounting”

Before being hired in August, all of First Security’s accounting, bookkeeping and tax work was outsourced to a small accounting firm by the name of Goldstein & Co. One of the reasons I was hired was to bring that work in-house. In 1987 the computer networks for small businesses were new, email was a few years in the future, and Microsoft Windows and Apple’s Macintosh (“Mac”) were yet to be widely used, especially in business settings. At First Security, we used IBM personal computers, or PCs, which operated on a system called Microsoft Disk Operating System, or MS-DOS.

Because of my work and training at M.R. Weiser, I was very familiar with MS-DOS and the prevailing spreadsheet application at that time, Lotus 1-2-3. However, any accounting systems that I had encountered up until this time were large “mainframe” industrial computer applications. I needed to do some research.

In one respect the corporate accounting needs of an investment firm are quite minimal. There are very few expenses other than things like; rent, payroll, supplies and other miscellaneous costs. However, when it comes to accounting for the investment side, it is more complicated. In addition, the tax rules governing “partnership accounting”, (First Security was formed as a partnership), were even more complex.  Due to tax laws, the most advantageous type of entity for a hedge fund was something called a “limited partnership”. Simply put, all the investors of the hedge fund are considered partners. Just like any other business partnership, partners earn their share of profits and losses based on ownership percentage. For example, if a partner contributes enough money that equals 10% of the value of the overall fund, then they will receive 10% of the profits and losses…..basically!  However, there are very distinct and complicated nuances when investments are involved, especially investments that are owned for long periods of time. Without going into a long boring explanation of partnership tax accounting for hedge funds, (which was called “layering”), suffice it to say that it can get very complicated. Being able to learn and understand the minute complexities of partnership accounting turned out to be one of the most important accomplishments of my career.

In my research, I discovered that any PC-based software applications that combined basic bookkeeping needs with accounting for investments were very expensive, and none of them included a partnership tax accounting capability. I decided to tackle each challenge separately.

I purchased a very basic bookkeeping and payroll application, called DAC Easy Accounting, for a whopping $59. After extensive research, I decided to buy an application called “The Professional Portfolio”, by Advent Software, to handle the investment accounting. As a side note: the company, Advent Software, played a prominent role in my career 10 years in the future. (Stay tuned). The trick was to somehow integrate these two systems, but I decided to simply manually record summary transactions derived from the reports generated by The Professional Portfolio, (“TPP”) into the DAC Easy accounting system. There was no technology integration, but that would come later. This very rudimentary system allowed us to bring the accounting and bookkeeping tasks in-house and saved the firm the substantial fees that were being charge by Goldstein. However, bringing the partnership tax accounting in-house would prove to be more complicated.

In my research of software applications, I came across a handy tool called a “macro”. A macro is a software tool that remembers your keystrokes. If you have a process that repeats the exact same keystrokes every time you can record those keystrokes using a macro and give that process a name. Each subsequent time you need to run that process all you need to do is open that particular macro and all of the keystrokes will occur automatically, saving substantial time. I purchased a macro software tool, (I don’t recall its name), and created macros for all our monthly reporting needs, combining and integrating the investment accounting from TPP into the corporate accounting system, DAC Easy. I became very adept at creating sophisticated macros that I was able to use to bring the partnership tax accounting process, “layering”, in-house as well.

Before creating the macro for the layering process, Goldstein would perform this accounting process by hand. One of Goldsteins accountants would take the investment reports and manually write the results on 17-inch-wide accounting ledger sheets. Over the years these ledgers had to be taped together and would be over 50 inches wide. The accountant would then manually add up the columns and rows on these ledgers using a desktop adding machine to prepare, also manually, the tax returns and the tax schedules for each individual investor. This manual process took weeks to complete. In 1988 to test my macro layering process, after Goldstein completed their manual tax process, I ran the macros, and we compared the results. The results showed that any discrepancies between the two systems were manual errors in the Goldstein process. The entire macro process took less than an hour to complete compared to the weeks of billable time at Goldstein. Again, bringing this in-house saved us substantial accounting fees. This not only satisfied Morty and Bob but even the senior partner at Goldstein, Dorian Goldstein, was quite impressed, which became very important in a couple of years.

These early months of working at First Security were an exciting and fulfilling time in my career. I was extremely successful in my job, I was making good money, I was working with interesting people, and I was becoming quite adept at developing rudimentary technology skills which I would use throughout my career.

Things were going so well at First Security, towards the end of 1988 Bob was contemplating merging with another firm and expanding into new investment strategies. As a result, Bob and his potential new partners were looking at new office space in a prestigious new office building further uptown on Park Avenue. He asked me to weigh in on the architectural design of the proposed new office because he wanted to make sure that my new corner office was to my satisfaction. “After all,” he said, “we can’t have our new Chief Financial Officer without a nice office”. I was going to get promoted. This was all extremely exciting!

Polly Bergen, Alan Lerner, and the Metropolitan Opera House

There were some additional perks to working at First Security. In the 1980s Bob Denison was known in the NYC elite social circles. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Opera House and his marriage to the young and beautiful TV news producer and journalist, Terre Blair, was NY Post Page Six worthy. Because of his wealth and association with the Baker family, he had many connections within “high society”. In addition, the receptionist and office manager of First Security, Judy, had been the personal assistant to Alan Lerner. Then after Lerner’s death, she became Andrew Lloyd Webber’s assistant. Alan Lerner is famous for musical collaborations with Fredrick Lowe, and Lerner and Lowe wrote the music for My Fair Lady, Gigi, Camelot and other famous plays and movies. Of course, Andrew Lloyd Webber became a world-renowned composer for plays such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera, Evita and so many others. When Judy worked for Alan Lerner she became very close friends with the famous actress Julie Andrews who visited Judy at First Security’s offices a few times. It was because of Judy that Jeanmarie and I got tickets to see The Phantom of the Opera while it was still in previews in 1988. As an aside, the final Broadway performance of Phantom occurred in April 2023. This 35-year run is the longest in Broadway history.

I recall Judy being a lovely person, very sweet and generous, albeit a bit eccentric. She never married or had any children. She had a stuffed bear collection, and she would speak of the bears as her “babies”. Putting this unique idiosyncrasy aside, she was a very nice person. One day I was talking with her and Terry, (Bob’s assistant), about my struggle to come up with an idea for Jeanmarie’s upcoming birthday, (this was either in 1987 or 1988). Judy simply said, “Leave it to me!”

Judy was also friends with the actress, Polly Bergen. Ms. Bergen starred in movies, (Cape Fear, Caretaker), on Broadway, (Follies), and on Television, (The Sopranos and Desperate Housewives). With her connections to Ms. Bergen and Alan Lerner, Judy put together an amazing day for Jeanmarie.  The day after she said “Leave it to me” she told me that she had arranged for Jeanmarie “ to be Polly Bergen for a day” and I was going to be Alan Lerner.

Apparently, Ms. Bergen had a standing appointment for a “A Day of Leisure” spa treatment at Elizabeth Arden’s 5th Avenue spa. She wasn’t going to use one of her appointments and Jeanmarie could go in her place, free of charge. In addition, even though Alan Lerner had passed away in 1986, Judy was still friends with his widow, (the last of Lerner’s 8 wives), Liz Robertson. Lerner and Robertson had their own suite at the Ritz Carlton on Central Park South. It was on a high floor with beautiful views of Central Park, and we were given use of it for the night after Jeanmarie’s spa day, again free of charge. To complete this birthday package, I made a reservation at one of NYC’s classic French restaurants, Le Grenouille. It was an amazing day, evening, and night. It is still a wonderful memory for us.

As I mentioned above, Bob was on the Board of the Metropolitan Opera House. Bob had tickets for the opening night of La Boheme in 1989 (February 27…thank you Google), but he was not going to be able to use them. He offered them up to anyone in the office. Knowing how much Jeanmarie’s mom loved opera I took them with the thought of inviting Katty, (the original Katty). Bob was happy to give me the tickets especially when I told him who I was going to invite.

The location of the seats was the two center seats in the first row of the mezzanine. Premier seats! In 1989 going to the opera was still an elegant affair. I wore my best suit, (I didn’t own a tuxedo), and Katty wore an elegant black dress with her best coat. We had dinner at a restaurant that was directly across the street from Lincoln Center. Unfortunately, I do not recall its name and it has since closed. We both thoroughly enjoyed La Boheme. I enjoyed it so much that at the end of the final very dramatic scene, I was about to enthusiastically clap. However, it wasn’t the end of the scene and when I went to clap the gentleman who was sitting to my left grabbed my arm and said, quite annoyed, “Don’t you dare!!” A lesson in opera etiquette.

These amazing events and resulting memories were the result of the people I met while working at First Security. I couldn’t help but feel gratitude for the good fortune of working at such an amazing place. This all came to a crashing end, including the proposed merger and my anticipated promotion, on March 30th, 1989, the day after the 61st Academy Awards ceremony.

Terre Blair, Marvin Hamlisch and the 61st Annual Academy Awards

Thursday, March 30, 1989, started like any other workday at First Security. Each employee arrived at work just as we did any other day, except this day was going to be different. Bob did not show up to the office that morning which was not unusual as he often had meetings outside of the office for many reasons. However, what was unusual was that his assistant, Terry, did not have any meetings in his calendar. Again, that wasn’t a cause for alarm, because he could have scheduled something on his own and not have told Terry. We went on with our morning. Then, around 10:00 am, Terry received a phone call from Bob’s butler that changed our idyllic little company forever and ultimately altered the course of my career and Morty’s career, and not to overstate it but it changed the course of my life as well.

Bob lived with his wife, Terre Blair, at One Sutton Place South, an extremely upscale building located between 56th and 57th Streets on the East River in Manhattan. Sutton Place South was, and is, home to many of the “rich and famous”. I had visited the apartment on one occasion when Bob wanted me to meet Terre who was attempting to launch a business in the fashion industry and he wanted me to handle her accounting needs. This never materialized, as we will see.

The apartment was nothing like any other apartment I had ever seen. It was full of tasteful opulence and beautifully decorated, but at the same time, it felt a bit cold. The best way I can think of to describe it was that it was like a museum or a gallery. Beautiful pieces of art and furniture, and a lot of marble with marble floors and Grecian columns. Prominent in the display of art was a portrait of Bob painted by the famous avant-garde artist, Andy Warhol. My visit left me with quite an impression.

After receiving the phone call from Bob’s butler, Terry, (Bob’s assistant, not Terre his wife), became quite upset. Apparently, Bob was at home the previous night and was watching the Academy Awards on his very large television set. According to his butler, Bob became enraged while he was watching the “red carpet” coverage as he saw his wife, Terre, exit a limousine arm-in-arm with Marvin Hamlisch. Hamlisch was a composer who became famous for his movie scores such as The Sting, The Way We Were and many others. He was going to be conducting the orchestra for that night’s ceremony. Terre was supposed to be in Florida on a business trip, so imagine Bob’s surprise. She was cheating on Bob and now the entire entertainment world, the world in which he socialized, knew as well. He was humiliated and went into a rage. According to the butler he went around the apartment smashing anything he could get his hands on. Among the few things that were spared was his Warhol portrait. He then stormed out of the apartment. 

Bob did not come back to the office for several days and we did not know what to expect the next time he did show up to the office. In addition, no one knew where he was. He did not come to work that day, nor did he come home to his apartment. We all went home for the weekend not knowing what to expect when we returned to the office the following Monday.

When we arrived Monday morning we were still in the dark and a bit nervous.  Bob did appear at work that morning, or maybe Tuesday morning, I don’t recall. As he rushed by all of us, he barked to Terry to come into his office. We all noticed that he was unshaven, and his clothes were disheveled.

When Terry emerged from Bob’s office, she was very upset. Bob came out a few minutes later, poked his head into Morty’s office, and said, “Hold down the fort. I’m going away for a while.” With that, he just left. It was some time before we found out that he was staying at a villa in Biarritz on the southwest coast of France. The villa was owned by an old friend of his family who was also a current investor in First Security. Bob was gone for quite a long time. In the meantime, we continued to operate and manage the business and service our investors.

When Bob returned many weeks later, he quickly announced that changes were going to be made. He hired a new senior executive, Francine.  She and Bob had some mutual friends and he reached out to her to shake things up at First Security. I don’t recall if her title was Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, or something else. She had investment experience and I remember her being very difficult to work with. After showing up the first day we traded very cordial introductions. We were told that she was now our boss, and she, with a cigar in her mouth, began giving orders. To say we were not happy would have been an understatement, but this was Bob’s firm, and he could do what he thought was best for the investors, so we tried to persevere.  Soon after this First Security stopped being the ideal place to work, in fact, it was quite awful.

Francine was a difficult boss to work for at times. Neither she nor Bob would yell, but you knew when they were not pleased. The difference between Bob and Francine was that Francine was not an unpleasant person. Bob on the other hand became miserable and he took it out on us. He was very adept at psychological manipulation. Work became very unpleasant for all of us. Besides Bob and Francine, the employees included Morty, Terry, Judy, and I had recently hired an assistant controller, Bill. If I’m remembering the timing correctly, Judy left First Security not long after this and we hired a new receptionist, Diana. For the next several months our lives at First Security became hell.

I hated going to work. Many mornings I would arrive to work with tears in my eyes in anticipation of what I was going to have to endure that day. If it wasn’t for the other employees, who were all amazing people, I do not believe I would have lasted as long as I did. In the summer of 1990, over a year after the Academy Awards incident, I began looking for another job.

Time to Escape

Job hunting in 1990 was not easy. The U.S. economy was in the midst of a recession and jobs were hard to find. My options to find a position in another investment firm were limited, so I decided to fall back on my cable TV experience from my days at M.R. Weiser. I did not limit myself to just the cable industry, but it was the industry in which I thought I could obtain the highest-paid position. I became very discouraged when the only interviews I could find were for low paying, bookkeeping and accounting positions. Couple this frustration with the psychological battering I was getting from Bob, I became quite depressed. Just when I was ready to give up and take one of those lower-level, lower paying, jobs I received a call from one of Weiser’s old cable-TV clients, Jones Intercable. Jones had recently hired a new Chief Financial Officer who was looking to hire a controller. I had two interviews, and both went very well. He offered me the position, albeit with a slight pay cut. I was making $53,000 plus a bonus at First Security and this position was paying $50,000. I didn’t care. I was happy that I was finally going to be able to get out from under Bob’s, and to a lesser extent, Francine’s thumb. I could live with the pay cut.

I received the official job offer from Jones Intercable in the mail a few days later. Included in the package was a pamphlet that described the company’s benefits. I had some questions about those benefits and planned to call the CFO, (whose name, I believe, was Rich), the following morning to get the clarification I was looking for. These weren’t big questions, and they were nothing that would have prevented me from accepting the offer, but I did want to speak with Rich before officially accepting as well as resigning from First Security. This turned out to be a wise decision.

I called Rich the next morning, but he was not available to take my call and I was asked if I wanted to leave a message, (there was no voicemail in 1990). I replied, “Yes, thank you. My name is Tom Kerns. I received the employment package for the controllership position, and I just have a few questions. If you can ask him to call me back, I would be most appreciative.” I got a very curt reply, “I’ll give him the message.” About an hour, or so, later Rich called me back. When I answered the phone, he immediately began yelling, “What are you, fucking, stupid?!” Confused I asked him what was wrong. “The person you spoke with and left that stupid message was the current controller who didn’t know he was being fired, you moron! Now I have a personnel crisis on my hands.” Rich then ended the call with, “If you now think you’re going to fucking work for me you're even dumber than I thought!” Then he hung up the phone. I was devastated!! Besides the fact that I was unaware that the current controller was being fired, I had no way of knowing who it was that took the message. It is now obvious to me that I dodged a bullet by not working for that guy, but that’s not what was on my mind at that moment. All I could think of was that I was not going to be able to leave First Security and Bob Denison. I immediately went into the men’s room and had a panic attack and a crying fit. Eventually, I was able to calm down, but I made up some excuse to go home for the day and left. But…..the Universe was watching.

Over the Rainbow

As I left the office that day, of course, it began to pour rain. After getting soaked and making it to the Subway I was cursing my life while waiting for the E train to take me to Port Authority to get the bus home to Jersey City. While I was waiting for the train, I noticed that I was the only person on the downtown side of the platform, which was just fine by me given my very sullen mood. I then heard a saxophone begin to play “Over the Rainbow”, which I assumed was in homage to the rain in the streets above. The sax player was on the other platform across the tracks, and he was by himself as well. It was as if he was playing just for me. It was then that I began to realize that the time would come when I would feel that “the clouds are far behind me.” And things did begin to look up.

It was just about this time that we found out that Jeanmarie was pregnant with our first child. We had been trying for a while and we were both over the moon with happiness. It began to put things in perspective. I returned to work and while the abuse did not subside, I was able to deal with it a bit better and with a different attitude. Not long after the Jones Intercable incident, the Managing Partner at GGK, Dorian Goldstein, asked me to come to his office because he had some questions about my “macro layering process”. In this meeting, he told me about a person he had met who had just launched a new software company specializing in “investment partnership accounting”. Dorian knew I was looking for a new job outside of First Security, (“Over the Rainbow??”).  He, too, was subject to the psychological games of Bob and Francine, so we developed a “comrades in arms” type of relationship.
Dorian knew this new software company was looking for accountants who knew the layering process to help him build the new software application. Dorian set up an interview.

The software company and the software application were both called Hedgeware. All the skills that I developed over the previous 2 1/2 years made me the perfect candidate for this position. Again, I had to take a pay cut to $50,000 but I was not going to let anything get in the way of taking this new position. I was ecstatic and relieved! Couple this new lease on my career life with the anticipation of having our first child I felt that life was, in fact, looking good! Maybe, just maybe, “dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true.”