When he started a securities firm under his own name in 1967, Sanford Charles Bernstein made sure that hurried investors would not fail to notice. To announce the firm, the 41-year-old upstart ran a series of full-page newspaper ads emphasizing in bold, black type a single word: “Bernstein.”
The display of hubris drew a wave of titters. The titters turned to gasps when the Brooklyn-born Mr. Bernstein topped himself with a demonstration of chutzpah that is still reverberating on Wall Street.
At the time, so-called discretionary accounts, in which a broker makes all the investment decisions without consulting the client, were such an industry scandal that the New York Stock Exchange imposed strict controls and many old-line brokers banned them altogether. But Mr. Bernstein announced that he would seek nothing but discretionary accounts.
Wall Street laughed off Mr. Bernstein’s chances for attracting serious investors.
By the time he died on Wednesday at 72 at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Mr. Bernstein had long since had the last laugh.
His brokerage had grown into one of the world’s largest independent investment companies, managing more than $80 billion in securities for 25,000 private and institutional clients, and Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. had become one of the most respected names on Wall Street — even as Mr. Bernstein, true to his contrarian ways, had changed his own name.
To honor a late-life surge of interest in his Jewish heritage and his conversion to Orthodox Judaism, he had moved to Jerusalem, established dual American-Israeli citizenship and replaced his “Sanford” and “Charles” with rough Hebrew equivalents, becoming Zalman Chaim Bernstein.
Mr. Bernstein’s family said that he died from complications of lymphoma. In addition to his brother, who lives in Manhattan, Mr. Bernstein, who was married three times, is survived by his mother, Martha, of Manhattan; his wife, Mem; a son, Claude, of New Canaan, Conn.; two daughters, Leslie Armstrong and Rochel Leah Bernstein, both of Manhattan, and three grandchildren.
