Leon Levy

Leon Levy
Born	September 13, 1925(1925-09-13) Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Died	April 6, 2003(2003-04-06) (aged 77) Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Nationality	American
Alma mater	City College of New York
Occupation	Mutual fund manager Hedge fund manager
Net worth	$1 billion (Est. 2003)

Leon Levy (September 13, 1925 – April 6, 2003) was an American investor, financier and philanthropist.

Early years

Levy studied at Townsend Harris High School and then Economics at City College of New York. After serving in the U.S. Army, he began working as a research analyst. He was strongly influenced in his business approach by his father, Jerome Levy, an economist and business executive who taught him the role corporate profits play in charting the economy's direction.

Oppenheimer

In 1951, Levy joined Oppenheimer & Co., which was at the time a broker-dealer and financial services manager for institutional clients, where he formed the first Oppenheimer mutual fund. By the early 2000s, the Oppenheimer Group had some 60 funds, worth more than $120 billion. Levy is generally believed to be one of the first Wall Street leaders to understand the future growth of the mutual fund industry, characterized by some as a "Wall Street investment genius."

In 1982, he sold his share of Oppenheimer to Mercantile House Holdings PLC, a publicly owned British corporation, for $162 million and co-founded, with partner Jack Nash, Odyssey Partners, a private investment partnership. Odyssey grew to be a $3 billion hedge fund before it was dissolved in 1997.

Jerome Levy Institute

Levy founded, in 1986, in honor of his father, the Jerome Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. The Institute's stated objectives are "to serve the wider policymaking community in the United States and the rest of the world by enabling scholars and leaders in business, labor, and government to work together on problems of common interest." Levy served as chairman of the Institute's Board of Governors and was a life trustee and leading donor to Bard College.

The Levy Institute has established itself as sponsor of extensive work in Keynesian and post-Keynesian economics.

In 1995, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, Local 100, of New York, in a letter addressed to the executive director of the Jerome Levy Institute, accused Odyssey Partners of engaging in "slash-and-burn management" and "financial opportunism", which, according to the Union, was in "striking contradiction [to] the goals and work of the Jerome Levy Institute." Since Leon Levy and his partner Jack Nash each owned about 9% of Smith and Wollensky's Steakhouse in New York City, the Union also accused them, as part-owners, of being responsible for the business employing workers "without a contract for a year", "violat[ing] labor laws by threatening employees" and "threatening or disciplining employees for union activity."

Leon Levy Foundation

The Leon Levy Foundation, created from Levy's estate in 2004, established the Philip J. King Professorship at Harvard University to support a scholar who will use "an interdisciplinary approach to advance the understanding of ancient civilizations in the Near East and the Mediterranean."

In spring, 2006, the Leon Levy Foundation pledged $200 million to New York University for the creation of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, "a center for advanced scholarly research and graduate education, intended to cultivate cross-cultural study of the ancient world, from the western Mediterranean to China." The donation created controversy among many academics and caused the resignation from NYU’s Center for Ancient Studies —which is not affiliated with the new institute— of NYU professor Randall White, who was concerned about ethical problems in receiving donation from a foundation whose benefactor has sometimes been associated with questionable practices in antiquities collection and trafficking. Several scholars outside NYU, especially from Bryn Mawr College, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Cincinnati, also commented negatively on NYU's acceptance of the donationt. Other scholars supported the institute and its donation. Professor James McCredie, of the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU's graduate teaching and advanced research center for art history, wrote a letter to Provost David McLaughlin endorsing the project. It was signed by IFA's seven professors of ancient art and architecture.

Peter Watson and Cecelia Todeschini's The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities--From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Greatest Museums (2006) lays out the dynamics of the illegal trade in antiquities, where Leon Levy and Shelby White appear as practitioners of unethical practices in collecting them.

In 2009, the Conservation Center at New York University’s Institute for Fine Arts (IFA) announced it has received a $1 million grant from The Leon Levy Foundation to "advance graduate training in archaeological conservation." The grant created 15 Leon Levy Fellowships at the Institute that would "support promising students enrolled in the Center’s four-year training program."

Philanthropy

Levy and his wife Shelby White donated $20 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the construction of the Leon Levy and Shelby White Court, a gallery hosting the largest selection of Hellenistic and Roman artwork ever exhibited at that museum. The gallery hosts a number of pieces from Levy and White's substantial art collection, which also includes art from the Near East.

Starting in 1997, the couple also gave more than $6 million to 133 scholars for the publication of works on archaeological excavations, which had been completed but never published. The projects funded by their program, the Shelby White-Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications, include excavations at some of the highest profile archaeological sites throughout Greece and the Middle East, including Knossos, Aphrodisias, Kition, Ras Shamra, Sarepta, Mt. Gerizim, Ekron, Lachish, Megiddo, Jerusalem, Pella, Jerash, the Dead Sea Plains, Assur, Nineveh, Nuzi, and Tepe Hissar.

The Levys were benefactors to Christ's College, Cambridge, the New York Botanical Garden, the Rockefeller University, and the Institute for Advanced Study. Among other organizations, they donated $20 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a new Roman wing, $6 million to theRockefeller University to fund a brain research center, $5 million for a new visitors' center at the New York Botanical Garden and $1 million to the American Civil Liberties Union to fund civil liberties "in a period of increased government surveillance."

Publications

In 2002, Levy published a memoir, written with Eugene Linden, called The Mind of Wall Street: A Legendary Financier on the Perils of Greed and the Mysteries of the Market (Perseus Book Group).

Later life

When he died in his late seventies, Leon Levy was estimated to be worth approximately one billion dollars, though his personal wealth might have been substantially higher were it not for his philanthropic interests. In the last year of his life, Levy was commuting up the Hudson River from New York City to teach a class at Bard College, Contemporary Developments of Finance, in which he focused on his belief that investing is for people as much a psychological as an economic act.

External links

• Leon Levy Foundation website
• Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
• The Shelby White-Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications
• Forbes.com: Forbes 400 Richest in America 2002
• "Challenge: How vulnerable is Wall Street?", Leon Levy interview, Nov-Dec, 1998