Raymond Mason in 2002.
(Bloomberg) — Raymond “Chip” Mason, who expanded his agency, Legg Mason Inc., by acquisitions over 4 a long time into one of many largest cash managers within the US, has died. He was 88.
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Mason died Friday in Naples, Florida, in keeping with an announcement from his household, which didn’t present a trigger.
Mason took pleasure in his agency’s popularity for integrity. “We’ve got an ethic that may be very robust,” he advised MarketWatch in 2004. “Should you discuss to anyone right here, they’ll laughingly check with my feedback about chalk, as a result of I’m all the time telling them I don’t need them anyplace close to the road.”
The flagship fund, Legg Mason Worth Belief, beat the S&P 500 Index for 15 straight years underneath fund supervisor Invoice Miller. The run led to 2006.
Mason, a fan of the Baltimore Orioles baseball staff, was a civic chief in Baltimore, serving to to construct new stadiums for the Orioles and the Nationwide Soccer League’s Ravens, and serving as chairman of the board of trustees at Johns Hopkins College. In 2005, the School of William & Mary named its enterprise college the Raymond A. Mason College of Enterprise.
Mason & Lee
Raymond Adams Mason was born on Sept. 28, 1936, in Lynchburg, Virginia, to Raymond Mason and the previous Marion Adams. He was 7 when his father died, and he moved together with his mom to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
After graduating from William & Mary in 1959, he returned to Lynchburg to work at his uncle’s brokerage agency, Mason & Lee Inc.
“They might’ve been in promoting and I might’ve gone into promoting,” Mason stated, in keeping with a 1998 Institutional Investor story.
In 1962, when he was 25, Mason opened his personal brokerage, Mason & Co., in Newport Information, Virginia, with $200,000 borrowed from native businessmen. The agency grew to 6 workplaces with 60 brokers by 1970, when it merged with Legg & Co., a Baltimore agency relationship to 1899, whose companions have been growing older. Legg had been a member of the New York Inventory Alternate longer than some other agency in Maryland, the Baltimore Solar reported on the time.
Mason grew to become president of the brand new agency, which had greater than 500 staff and fee quantity of about $12 million, in keeping with the Washington Put up. In 1973, the agency merged with New York-based Wooden, Walker & Co., and in 1981 it mixed with Mason & Lee. Mason grew to become chief working officer of the brand new firm.