Howard Stein
Howard Stein, a former chief of the Dreyfus Corporation and considered by many to be a “father” of the mutual fund industry, died at his home in Southampton on Tuesday, July 26. He was 84.
Known as the man who invented the first “no load” money market fund, Mr. Stein became a leading force in bringing stock and bond investment to the public. From 1955, when he joined Dreyfus, to the time the company was sold to the Mellon Bank Corporation in 1994, Dreyfus grew from $2 million to $80 billion in assets.
In 1968, he made a controversial move by taking a leave of absence to work as chief fundraiser for Senator Eugene J. McCarthy’s anti-Vietnam War campaign, and was added to Richard Nixon’s “Political Enemies Project” list. In the 1970s, he set up a fund to invest in companies that were concerned with environmental conservation. Mr. Stein also served on the Presidential Task Force on Market Mechanisms, which investigated the October 19, 1987, market crash.
Born in Brooklyn on October 6, 1926, to Polish immigrants, he attended the Straubenmuller Textile High School and the Juilliard School, which gave him a scholarship to become a violinist. Instead of taking that route, he looked for work on Wall Street and became a trainee at Bache & Company and eventually joined Dreyfus. Mr. Stein rose from Jack Dreyfus Jr.’s assistant to president in 1965 and chairman and chief executive in 1970.
When Dreyfus was acquired by the Mellon Bank Corporation, Mr. Stein continued as Dreyfus’s chairman and chief executive and resigned in 1996.
Mr. Stein is survived by his wife, Janet Stein (née Gelder); daughters, Julia Stokien, Jocelyn Hayes, Jessica Levine, Joanna Stein and Jennifer Seay; and six grandchildren.
on Aug 10, 2011