Jack Dreyfus

[y66]

Excerpts from WSJ obituary.

Jack Dreyfus, who died Friday at age 95 in New York, helped found the retail mutual-fund business through his Dreyfus Fund and carried the sobriquet "The Lion of Wall Street" -- after a stroke of advertising inspiration that made a live lion his firm's symbol.

 

Born in Montgomery, Ala., Jack J. Dreyfus Jr. grew up the son of a candy maker. He showed his competitive edge as early as age five, when he beat his grandfather -- a cousin to Alfred Dreyfus, the victim of France's Dreyfus Affair -- at dominoes. Growing up, he excelled at golf and earned his pocket change by solving for a quarter apiece the bridge puzzles in Collier's magazine for his father. But he was an uninspired student at Lehigh University, where he said he graduated "Summa Cum Ordinary."

 

His first job on Wall Street, as a clerk in a trading firm, came about after his father paid the firm the first 20 weeks of his salary up front, he learned years later. He wrote that he resented his early jobs on Wall Street because they got in the way of playing bridge at Manhattan's Cavendish Club.

 

In 1947, with little capital and not much more reputation, he teamed with former Stock Exchange official Max Jacquin Jr. to found Dreyfus, Jacquin & Co. While noting Mr. Jacquin's extensive Wall Street experience, all the New York Times mentioned about Mr. Dreyfus was that he was "a bridge player and golfer of note." Later in 1947, Mr. Jacquin retired and the firm reverted to Dreyfus & Co.

 

After struggling to attract and keep clients for several years, Mr. Dreyfus hit on the idea of a mutual fund. In 1951, he purchased a small common-stock fund-management company and launched the Dreyfus Fund with about $500,000 under management. The fund's parent, Dreyfus Corp., went public in 1965. The firm, today a part of Bank of New York Mellon Corp., says it has $928 billion in assets under management.

 

Despite his success, Mr. Dreyfus suffered from depression, fear, obsession and other mental-health problems in the late 1950s. After trying a veritable pharmacopoeia of cures, he hit on the drug Dilantin, normally prescribed for epileptic seizures. A several-decade campaign to have the drug approved for treatment of depression came to naught despite his funding clinical trials, ad campaigns and even writing two books, "The Story of a Remarkable Medicine" and "Written in Frustration." He thought the drug showed promise for other psychological problems, as well as narcolepsy, diabetes, hypertension and stuttering.

 

Mr. Dreyfus had better success in sports. He said he had won 18 amateur golf championships, and at age 62 won the U.S. Open Doubles Lawn Tennis Championship for those 60 and over. He was hailed by the Encyclopedia of Bridge as "the best gin rummy player in the United States."