This Mr. Pforzheimer Tries a New Direction
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Last year, Carl H. Pforzheimer III extricated his family’s firm from the broker-dealer business. “The compliance burden was too much,” he explains. “We were reporting to six different regulatory bodies. The risks were too great.”
It was no doubt a difficult decision to make. Mr. Pforzheimer’s grandfather, who was one of the founders of the American Stock Exchange (known as the Curb to old-timers), had started the eponymous firm over a century ago. The company was for many years a highly regarded investment-research shop, known especially for its work in the energy industries in the 1970s and ’80s.
Over time, the firm had also owned a major specialist outfit, which was sold to Drexel Burnham Lambert in 1987 for cash. That turned out to be a dandy trade.
As numerous competitors merged, sold, or went public over the years, Carl H. Pforzheimer remained a partnership, focused on investing. Though management’s adherence to tradition may have left some money on the table (the buyouts in the heady 1980s and ’90s were pretty lucrative for many), the remaining asset-management business, called CHIPCO Asset Management, appears to suit the third Mr. Pforzheimer.
He and his partner, George Frelinghuysen, manage a conservative portfolio, consisting mainly of blue chip stocks and special situations in which the managers become especially engaged. The arrangement appears appealing for Mr. Pforzheimer, in that it allows him to pursue his many distinctive extracurricular activites.
Among other pursuits, Mr. Pforzheimer is undoubtedly one of the few Wall Street types to become an amateur glassblower. When he and his wife began collecting glass about 30 years ago, he decided he should know how the pieces were made. Thus began his involvement with a nonprofit called Urban Glass, on whose board Mr. Pforzheimer has served since 1986. He is currently chairman.
Urban Glass, in Brooklyn, is the largest artist-access glass center in America. The 17,000-square-foot facility contains two hot glass furnaces that melt 2,000 pounds of glass each day, and offers classes, visiting artist fellowships, and exhibitions. Also, the organization sponsors a program called the Bead Project, which encourages low-income women to learn about making and selling glass bead ornaments and jewelry.
Mr. Pforzheimer tends to blow glass two or three times a year, just to keep current, in between trips to … Bulgaria? Yes, he also serves on the board of the Bulgarian-American Enterprise Fund. This fund was created in 1992 under the Support for East European Democracy Act, which was passed by Congress to encourage fledgling capitalist enterprises in Eastern European countries.
Astonishingly, Bulgaria sounds like a stock one might want to own. Last year, direct foreign investment in Bulgaria rose 42% to $2.4 billion. Tourism was ahead 14% in 2004, and has climbed by double-digit amounts each year since 2000. Importantly, Standard and Poor’s has raised the country’s debt rating to investment grade, and European Union membership is expected in 2007. Not bad for a country heretofore best known for shot-putters, with a reform government that came to power less than a decade ago.
Since 1995, the portfolio of BAEF has grown steadily, reflecting its investments in local industry, real estate, and banking. Since the early 1990s, the fund has made investments and loans totaling more than $380 million to some 4,500 companies in Bulgaria. Considering the rickety state of commercial activity as Bulgaria emerged from communism, the success of the venture is impressive.
Mr. Pforzheimer has also been an entrepreneur in his own right in the Eastern Bloc, having started a trading company in Minsk, Belarus, in the early days after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Many of Mr. Pforzheimer’s involvements are linked to his years at Harvard and the Harvard Business School. He has served on the board of the university’s alumni association and on numerous committees related to financial aid and fund raising. In addition to serving on the boards of U.S. Trust and Ampco-Pittsburgh, he is also extremely active at the Visiting Nurse Service, where he was chairman of the board for a decade, as well as the family Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation; the Lincoln Center Institute; the International Executive Service Corps; Pace University, where he is chairman emerius; the Corning Museum of Glass; the National Humanities Center, and the New York Public Library. The list goes on.
In short, Mr. Pforzheimer is the sort of New Yorker who gives back, and who perhaps is overbooked. Luckily, when stressed, Mr. Pforzheimer can always retreat to blowing a little glass, which almost sounds illegal.