How will you attract athletes to Modern Bank?
We’re trying to talk to players’
associations and get involved with athletes that way. It was harder at HRJ,
because as athletes we did not have the same credibility [as career money
managers], and guys had no idea about our industry and had never heard of the
funds we were investing in. We hope that athletes will represent 5 to 10
percent of our client base here in three to five years. How did you end up in your current position?
I met the bank’s founder and
chairman, Bippy Siegal, when I was raising money for HRJ. We became friends and
started talking about this. The idea came to him after I told him about my own
personal banking needs—most of which were not being satisfied. As an affluent individual, what has been your experience as a bank
customer?
You expect a certain amount
of service. If you don’t get it, it’s annoying.
Before coming to Modern Bank, I had had my checking account at the same
institutional bank since 1979. I didn’t do one ounce of other business with it. You’d think the bank would want to do as much business with me as possible, but
it never offered me a loan. And on the investment side, I never saw anything
from it worth putting my money into. The clincher was that my wife could not
get a problem fixed in my daughter’s checking account involving a $30
transaction. They said there was no one there to deal with it. It should have
been handled in one phone call. What have been your own most pressing private banking needs as you
have built and preserved your assets?
I think I’m a typical customer;
I got involved because I wasn’t happy where I was. It has been a quick
turnaround for me. My accountant wasn’t so sure I should do this, but as soon we
started dealing with Modern Bank, he said, "This is better." I would never have
given money to the asset-management side of another bank. Here we have already
done that. And the nice thing is that it’s not just stocks, bonds and cash. It
has many other noncorrelated assets like real estate, commodities, oil and gas.
I also have a loan on a piece of property that my real estate company is
involved with.
How have you dealt with estate planning and
philanthropy?
On the estate planning side, we
formed a trust. Most of our holdings go through there. For philanthropy, my
wife, my daughters—ages 20 and 21—and I are involved with our foundation, the
Four Rings Montana Family Foundation. The "four" stands for my four kids—I have
sons who are 15 and 17—and my four Super Bowl rings. The foundation gives to children’s charities. For example, we
are helping with the Children’s Village in Santa Rosa [Calif.]. We just had a
fundraiser for it. It’s a foster home for siblings. We will try to keep siblings
together, so they will either graduate together or be adopted together. It’s
important for my kids to carry the work on; that is why my wife is teaching the
girls how to manage it. One has worked at the Children’s Village. Is it difficult raising your children around money and
celebrity?
They have had a sense from the
beginning that we are affluent. One of the boys wanted to count money all the
time. Even today, he will ask people, "Why did you buy that? That’s not worth
it. I would never have paid that." We’ve tried to give our children a solid
background in doing things the right way. We also let them know the money isn’t
a faucet.
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