The Savage Way E-Book

Frank Savage

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 502

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Inspiring lessons on business and life from Frank Savage Frank Savage's is an unlikely success story. Raised in segregated Washington, DC, by his mother, a hairdresser and entrepreneur with little formal education, Savage's career has taken him around the world as a globetrotting financier. From his first banking job at Citibank to his current position as Chairman Emeritus of Howard University, The Savage Way shares the life and business lessons he learned along the way. This memoir relates the many starts and stops, successes and failures in his long career, from his involvement in the collapse of Enron, to his experience investing in Africa, to his days as a competitive yachtsman--always guided by the wisdom of the mother who taught him to transcend all limits. * A powerful memoir of an inspiring business leader * Savage is the current Chairman of his alma mater, Howard University, and the CEO of the global financial services company Savage Holdings LLC A rare and inspiring story of personal and professional challenge and ultimate triumph, The Savage Way is a memoir that offers powerful inspiration and wisdom for tomorrow's business leaders.

Leseprobe

Contents

Foreword

Prologue

Chapter 1: Too Much Money

Chapter 2: Getting In, Struggling Out, Getting Right

Reflections

Chapter 3: La Savage, the Source and Inspiration

Chapter 4: The Journey to True Origins

Chapter 5: My Journey Deepens

Chapter 6: The Longer Road Home

Chapter 7: Africa Calls Once Again . . .

Chapter 8: Walking Over a Bridge Not Burned

Chapter 9: Sailing Lolita, Pulling It All Together

Reflections

Epilogue

Lolita Racing Record

Acknowledgments

Index

Additional Praise forThe Savage Way

Frank’s story is not just his story but our story: how a whole generation of African-Americans that came of age and were educated in an era of racial segregation, went on to become captains of industry. Shattering glass ceilings, we many times carried both the burden and the opportunity of being “the first”. . . . What is particularly remarkable about Frank’s narrative is his meteoric assent at a time when there were no role models in the global financial arena, and little appreciation for the importance of globalization.

—A. Barry Rand, Chairman of Howard University Board of Trustees, and CEO of AARP

One of the most difficult things in life is to overcome adversity. Frank Savage demonstrates how to navigate disturbed waters in times of peril. Integrity is a core value in life. Frank’s experience of restoring his reputation after the Enron debacle is inspiring.

—Gary Jobson, America’s Cup Hall of Fame and President of U.S. Sailing, the national governing body of sailing

Frank Savage has written a wonderful book that tells the story of personal determination and career achievement. . . . [The Savage Way] is also an insightful window into global business.

—Vali R. Nasr, Dean of The Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Affairs

A page-turner of a memoir! The Savage Way is the winning way. Bravo, Frank!

—Loida Lewis, businesswoman, philanthropist, civic leader, and author

Frank is a special person – professionally and personally. His ever-present smile, pride in family and friends, and business and sailing accomplishments all combine to make him a role model and a wonderful friend and colleague. This is a compelling life story worth telling.”

—Pamela P. Flaherty, Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees, Johns Hopkins University

The Savage Way teaches us that no dream is unattainable and that in the face of adversity, especially in uncharted waters, we must draw upon our core beliefs and values to right the ship of our own journey. The Savage Way is filled with heartfelt and candid reflections on personal and business experiences with lessons learned that both instruct and inspire.

—Sidney A. Ribeau, President of Howard University

Despite pursuing a demanding international business career, Frank Savage always responded when called upon to help his home community. As chairman of the Harlem-based Freedom National Bank during its troubled times, and as an investor of much needed capital in fledgling black businesses, Frank Savage as founder and CEO of the Equitable minority business investment initiative, never forgot his roots. The Savage Way is a testament to his commitment.

—David N. Dinkins, the 106th Mayor of New York City and Professor in the Practice of Public Affairs, Columbia University

I have known Frank almost 45 years and I’ve come to have a deep appreciation for his professionalism, his desire to be the best, and his business acumen. He is one of the one unsung heroes with respect to the success of Essence magazine. As a member of its board of directors, his judgment, his leadership, his commitment to the empowerment for African-American women was all deeply appreciated by me.

—Edward Lewis, Founder of Essence magazine

Frank’s honesty and courage in writing about some of his darkest days and sailing’s magical healing powers, presents a moving look at the shape of his humanity as well as his enduring survival instincts.

—Shahara Ahmad-Llewellyn, Commissioner of New York City Commission on Women’s Issues

The Savage Way is an inspirational story of finding joy and achieving success in unexpected places.

—H. Carl McCall, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, The State University of New York

I met Frank Savage when I was a 20-year-old undergraduate student serving on the board of trustees for Howard University. Since that time, he has been a mentor, a counselor, and a friend whose advice helped me become the 59th mayor of the city of Atlanta by the time I was 40 years old. The Savage Way includes so much of the guidance I received on so many late-night and early-morning calls. I could not be more pleased that he has made the decision to share it.

—Kasim Reed, Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia

Cover image: Kimberlee Holcombe

Cover design: Paul McCarthy

Copyright © 2013 by Frank Savage. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Savage, Frank.

The Savage way : successfully navigating the waves of business and life / Frank Savage.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-118-49460-8 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-51376-7 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-51377-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-51366-8 (ebk)

1. Savage, Frank. 2. Capitalists and financiers—United States—Biography. 3. Businessmen—United States—Biography. I. Title.

HG172.S35A3 2013

332.1092—dc23

2012033922

The origin of my memoir is a story in and of itself. It started years ago, when Cynthia Winston, the youngest tenured professor of psychology at my alma mater, Howard University, asked me to sit for an interview. Dr. Winston was eager to apply a new approach to oral history she was developing to chronicle my tenure as chairman of the university’s board of trustees. I was happy to comply.

This history was destined to be filed away in Howard’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, along with the archives of all of the university’s rich history. But along the way, something else happened, something I would have never anticipated.

Cynthia happened to be the daughter of one of my Howard classmates, Michael Winston, a former vice president of academic affairs at Howard and a Phi Beta Kappa. And this, perhaps, gave her the comfort to probe my experiences a little bit deeper than most might. At some point, during Cynthia’s questions regarding my background in the international business, philanthropic, and sailing worlds, she stopped almost mid-sentence and remarked, “Frank, you have a psychology of success that is unique. And your life is different from not only any previous Howard chairman, but any other African American I know. Your story needs to be told and disseminated around the world.”

I was taken aback, yet intrigued by her observation, and suggestion. With that, Cindy guided me on a journey of self-discovery which lasted five years. She has been with me all the way, and I could not have written this memoir without her insight and inspiration.

On the eve of the publication of this book, I was saddened by the untimely and quite serious illness of my colleague and partner in this effort, Cynthia Winston.

I dedicate this book to her.

—Frank Savage

Foreword

Frank Savage. Yes, sir!

Did I tell you that Frank is a generous man?

To know Frank Savage is a good thing because Frank is a man who has some credit cards. Ahhh, sukie. When Frank calls and says, “Let’s go out to dinner,” “Let’s do something,” I know I don’t have to bring my credit cards. One of the greatest men on the face of this earth, a long and very dear friend of mine (and I better keep his name to myself if I want to keep it that way), taught me the trick. Yes, don’t bring your credit cards, but also make sure you have good posture. You don’t slink away. Understand? No sir.

But time and decades of experience have taught me another golden part of that formula: Make sure my man Frank Savage is there.

Not only is he generous, Frank Savage is the kind of man who has a deep respect for how things are supposed to be done. He has great respect for his race and his culture. He would be embarrassed to be in a fine restaurant, these two men, Frank Savage and Bill Cosby, sitting there when the check arrives—Uh-Oh—and neither one of us has credit cards to pay for the meal after running up a great bill. That sort of just leaving things to fate, “oh well,” is not the Frank Savage way, it hasn’t been the way the man has lived his life and made himself into such a first-class success.

Before Frank shared this book with me, he told me all about what he had planned to write in it. He told me at dinners and business meetings, how he wanted this memoir to inspire every reader, young and not so young—like Frank—to find what is best in them. He said he wanted them to be inspired to reach higher than they ever thought they could. Stretch for excellence, no matter what color you are or where you’re from. And that’s more true, he says to me, for people not born with a famous name tacked on the back of theirs, or a leg up in the race to the top.

When Frank asked me if I would write this foreword, I was thinking I could write a sketch of the man and try not to give too much away, so you can have almost as much fun as I have had getting to know Frank Savage. Then there it was. This foreword popped into my brain. It was written and ready to go. This thing has made a home in my head and was just waiting for Frank to finish his book so it could hop on these pages.

There is so much of Frank’s story here. We see how his teen-age mother got on a train leaving her home in North Carolina and headed for a better life in Washington, DC. She got on that train with her infant twins, Frank and Frances, and just two bottles of milk. When she got to DC the milk was spoiled but, hey, her children weren’t. Frank shows us how this mother, a master chef of a beautician, reinvented herself into a kind of DC business legend, Madame La Savage. Everybody called her that, even little Frank and his sister. Then we see Frank getting his education, going to Howard University, and Johns Hopkins University, and how his world goes international. Before anybody can say Saudi Arabia, Frank and his young family are living there as he sinks his teeth into global finance as a young, African-American banker.

Then he’s in Africa, where he always dreamed of working. And then he’s back in America, raising money to help black businesses get a start. Has anyone heard of Essence magazine? Hello. My man Frank was there to help finance the single largest and most influential black woman’s magazine in history. And then he’s back to Africa, fighting apartheid in South Africa with smart money and a daring plan to use it.

Then Frank Savage went on to travel the world raising millions of dollars in one place, and I think even billions in another, as an international financial wizard, a major player with a pocket of shiny credit cards. An office in Japan. Meeting and holding high-finance dinners in Switzerland.

Once, Frank told me that there is no real secret to his life. He says he conducts his life and business the same way he sails—and races—his beautiful sailboats. All of them named for his lovely wife, Lolita. Smart man. I think there is a metaphor here: the man and his boat navigating through rough waters. Everybody can conjure up a picture of sailing, being out there on those waters even when there are sheep grazing on the sea.

I’m not joking.

You don’t know about the sheep? That’s sailing talk. It means when the winds are blowing so hard that you get these foamy tops on the water. From an airplane, it looks like sheep out there grazing on the ocean. With sailboating, most of us have two pictures in our heads: one, where people are just sitting there; and, two, everything is upright or you can read the small print on the bottom of the sail—yes!—because the wind is whipping all around you.

But when Frank sails, when he does anything, it is all about confidence and leadership. Confidence. And. Leadership. He says his magic to winning sailboat races is that, “I always know how to put my crew together, and get it to work beautifully together. That’s why I win, Bill.”

When he’s racing, he has to get a crew of sixteen, seventeen, people working like one. This is a man who knows that every person has to be held accountable. He knows that every person on that boat is going, for him, above and beyond his, and her, job, while making sure their two arms and two legs are magically working to somehow keep this boat out of danger and heading to the finish line.

I told him to please don’t tell too many other people because these are the very qualities everybody wants to have in their leaders. He’d get snatched up. These are all the great qualities that people remember in human beings, period. He just smiled at me the way he does with that warmth of his. If you know Frank Savage you have to know that smile. Here it is smack across this book’s cover. There are few people I know who quite have Frank’s smile, his warmth.

You take one look at the man and you know he’s comfortable with life. And that feeling, it’s very, very contagious. At times, one could almost become depressed when thinking of oneself when sitting next to Frank Savage; one might say to oneself, “Why am I not like this?”

When I told him this, Frank just smiled and reached for his credit card. Isn’t that marvelous?

That’s why I love Frank.

Bill Cosby

Prologue

Her name was Lolita. And not every port she carried me to over the years was charted in degrees of latitudes and longitudes.

On a flat sea her keel sat deeper in the water than twice the height of most men. From her teak deck, which flared with her hull like a dancer’s hips, her mast towered nearly 80 feet. And her length, from the stem to the stern, was an inch shy of 57 feet. With the wind bold in her sails, Lolita, the third and last vessel of that name that I have owned, was exhilarating as she knifed through the waves, leaving a foamy wake and a stinging, salty spray.

But like most things that matter, my gleaming sailboat, named for my dear wife, was much more than the sum of her parts, much more than could ever be suggested in her simple specifications. I trusted her to not only win sailboat races around the globe for me and my crew, I trusted her to sail me out of the storms of earthly preoccupations and into the places where serenity meets fulfillment as snugly as the sky meets the sea.

Not so long ago, drifting in this ephemeral place of open sea and open mind, I found myself contemplating what had brought me to this marvelous moment in my life. I had logged more than 70 years, a life that began in uncertain waters to find sweet swells of an enchanting childhood shared with my twin sister, Frances, then early success in international banking. It has been a life marked, sometimes painfully public, by dead seas and heady trade winds, too. It has been a life that has bestowed on me a beautiful and loving family, a devoted wife who has never left my side, even in the most difficult of times, and my children and grandchildren who mean more to me than life itself. And friends, such good friends.

I was blessed, I reminded myself, that afternoon at the helm, as I glided along a breathtaking waterscape with my heart light and soul brimming with gratitude, alone in my thoughts. I had literally journeyed so far beyond my birthplace of Mount Rocky, from the tobacco fields of North Carolina. I had sailed so far beyond the limited expectations too often the burden of black boys like me who grew up between the wake of the Great Depression of the late 1930s and the first promising ripples of the civil rights movement of the early 1960s. I was a kid, not too unlike black kids growing up today, who dared to dream larger than those who dared to doubt my capacity to make those dreams real.

So many of those dreams did materialize in my waking life; very few, but some, by way of luck or accident. Most came from being psychologically and emotionally prepared for opportunities.

I had learned at the feet of my incredible mother, watching her reinventing herself in our adopted hometown of Washington, DC, and becoming an icon of self-determination, an independent businesswoman long before such things were fashionable and profitable for black women. She would come to be known and addressed by just about everyone, as Madame La Savage.

As I steadied by boat’s helm through the sharpening wind that afternoon, lost in the wispy clouds of memory, I saw myself as a young man again, married to my first wife and expecting my first child. I saw myself heading to Africa for the first time as part of Operation Crossroads Africa, a brainchild of a visionary, Presbyterian minister based in Harlem.

I will never forget joining my fellow Crossroaders gathered at a special White House ceremony in the Rose Garden. President John F. Kennedy himself greeted us and told us that we represented the future of a rapidly changing world, one in which the old boundaries and provincial thinking was dissolving before our eyes. Of course, he was right as doors once shut began to loosen on their hinges just as my hard work gave me sturdy legs to walk through them.

Racing Lolita with Frank at the helm of his Swan 56, becoming overall winner of Around Block Island Race 2000.

After more than 30 years of thriving in two major Fortune 500 financial companies, I set up my own. Since August 2001, I have been the chief executive officer of Savage Holdings LLC, a global financial services company I founded and based in New York. Savage Holdings was to serve as a platform for me to give advice and guidance to global companies such as Hinduja Group, a family-owned conglomerate based in India.

My years in finance have afforded me a life even I could not have imagined 50 years ago. There are days when I sit in my mid-Manhattan office overlooking the storied corridors of America’s still formidable financial might and ponder the odds I beat to get here.

I wonder how much my resume reflects the man I am. Yes, it reveals some signposts of a life thoroughly lived: serving on the boards of numerous corporations and not-for-profit organizations, including Bloomberg, L.P., Lockheed Martin and the New York Philharmonic. It will indicate that I am chairman emeritus of the Board of Trustees of Howard University and trustee emeritus of Johns Hopkins University, my alma maters.

I have been a major contributor to political causes and candidates with whom I share a passion for making positive change in a country that has given me so much. I have also donated millions of dollars to Howard, where it all started for me. I also, and with great pride, set up one of the largest scholarships of its kind at Johns Hopkins Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, also known as SAIS, in Washington, DC.

On completing my graduate studies at SAIS, I was recruited by Citibank. I became the first African-American officer of Citibank and member of its international division. From my office on 54th and Madison Avenue, I can actually see the old Citibank building where my career began.

My first assignment: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It was a challenging experience and one that came as a surprise because I had expected to go to Africa. Eventually, after two years of proving myself, I was dispatched to Africa where I had long wanted to return since my Crossroads days there.

There is a picture of me that I cherish. It freezes me at an intersection of time—mid-1970s—and place—the Ivory Coast—and ambition—boundless. I am young, trim, and athletic, standing in an African marketplace dressed in an open-collared khaki shirt and matching pants. My hands are in my pockets as I pose, head slightly tilted, among African women who hover and mill about as if I were some lost son now found. My skin is the same luminous, rich, smooth brownness as theirs. I’m smiling in a kind of satisfaction only the photograph can do justice. My eyes are shaded behind dark brown sunglasses, yet there is a sense in my gaze that I was looking at my future. I have always loved Africa. Even as I traveled throughout the globe pursuing my financial career, Africa is still in my heart.

For some 50 years, I dedicated myself to international banking, corporate finance, and global investment management. And, as a black man, even as a part of the Great Mobility of the 1960s and 1970s when new generations of well-educated and well-prepared African Americans entered professions previously denied them, I often found myself a minority of one as I climbed to the top of my field and interacted with heads of commerce and state.

Race was always an unpredictable and potentially dangerous current. But I never let that stop or slow me in going as far as my talents and determination could take me.

Once, when I returned from a business trip to my Tokyo office, an African-American friend innocently asked me, “Frank, how does it feel working with Japanese, in Japan, knowing they are racist?”

“I have never experienced any racial prejudice in Japan,” I responded. “They know I am the chairman of a $35 billion American company and I am in charge of our business around the world.”

At that time, I was senior vice president of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, and vice chairman of Equitable Capital Management.

In 1993 I was named chairman of Alliance Capital Management International, a division of Alliance Capital Management Corporation. This move came as a result of the merger of Alliance Capital and Equitable Capital management Corporation. Whether to stay with the merged companies or to follow other pursuits, like some of my colleagues did, was a crucial decision point in my life.

At the time of the merger, Alliance was the largest publicly traded asset manager in the United States, with more than $800 billion under management.

After deciding to join Alliance Capital, I and a colleague, Norman Bergel—with the support of Dave Williams, who was Alliance’s CEO—raised more than $100 million to invest in the “new” South Africa. When Nelson Mandela was released from prison in February 1990, Thabo Mbeki, Mandela’s successor as president of that nation, asked me (largely based on our already bold investment efforts there) to join his International Investment Advisory Council to help the nation attract foreign investors.

At this point in my life, I was serving on the boards of corporations as diverse as Lockheed-Martin, Essence Communications, and, yes, Enron.

At home, I had served, pro bono, as the chairman of Freedom National Bank in Harlem, which had been started there by Jackie Robinson, the legendary black baseball player who desegregated major league baseball in 1949. The bank had fallen on hard times, principally because of management mistakes. A number of other African Americans in the financial community, including my friend Hughlyn Fierce of Chase Bank, had been asked to help out. I volunteered and soon became chairman of Freedom.

I had seen the world many times over and became as comfortable in the nerve centers of power and wealth, whether they be in New York, L.A., in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, as I am in my summer home in Italy; as comfortable as I am with the softer touch of power commanding my record-winning crew as we raced my Lolitas on the waters off Newport, of the Caribbean, of the Mediterranean, and beyond. In recent years, my love for and devotion to all things sailing earned me a seat on the honorary board of directors of the National Sailing Hall of Fame.

In April 2003, my wife and I mounted the steps to the awards ceremony to accept the prestigious Lord Nelson Award as the overall winner of the annual Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta, one of the world’s premier yachting events. For a quarter of a century it has attracted some of the best yachts and crews from the United States, Europe, Australia, and the Caribbean islands.

On that afternoon, Lolita and I stood on the winners platform under a clear, azure sky on Falmouth Harbor. We were greeted by a palpable, momentary hush among the assembled competitors. Although they knew that my Swan 56 cruiser/racer, Lolita, had won the regatta; they could not help but notice the graceful lines of my sailboat, her wind-swept sails and rigging, her magnificent crew working like a single organism bent on winning, when Lolita bested her competition.

But what many apparently had not noticed, had not known, was that her co-helmsman and owner was African American, was me, Frank Savage, Grace Savage’s boy from Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

This was the first time in the history of this prestigious race that a black man and a cruising boat had won the Overall Winner trophy, a large silver bowl that graces my living room today. The local Antiguans who had always crewed for the boats and worked to get them perfect for the race, were absolutely ecstatic. It was a moment of great pride for them that a “brother” had beaten all of the “big boats.”

Winning the overall Winners Trophy at Antigua was the crowning jewel of my sailboat racing career, a decades-long love of mine, a passion that began in the most unlikely way when I glanced at a sailing magazine on a flight home from St. Thomas with my wife. I was fortunate to have had the time and the resources to buy, for instance, a million-plus-dollar sailboat, and to afford another half-million dollars to equip her to sail and compete.

I was even more fortunate to have assembled and befriended an international crew, including two people of color, a Harvard-educated New York lawyer and an experienced Antiguan sailboat racer who knew the Antigua waters as well as the fish bred and born in them.

This victory was built on years of preparation with my first Lolita, a 46-foot Swan, and our victories in our class in the 2001 and 2002 Antigua regattas. Sailing well, like living well, is not a casual affair. It comes down to self-confidence, preparation, tenacity, and leadership, all qualities my mother instilled in me at the earliest age I can remember. In a very real way, my passion for sailing is the personification of my philosophy of life.

Nothing is accomplished alone. Nothing worthwhile is achieved strictly by chance. And nothing can be truly known unless it is understood by your heart as much as by your head.

This sense of me is what enabled me to break new ground in business, to live in a beautiful home overlooking Central Park where I have entertained world leaders and bounced each of my four grandchildren on my knee; this sense has helped me be the best husband and father and friend I can possibly be.

This is what I have endeavored to bring to this book, a sharing of my values. These pages are not so much a story of one man’s life, but a chart, a compendium of my successes, and, yes, failures, too, to assist you, any reader, in navigating your own course to success and fulfillment. That means even in the darkest of days and through the most treacherous of seas, whether you have the wind at your back and your destination in sight.

In either case, we must always be the helmsmen of our own destiny.

Chapter 1

Too Much Money

The most dangerous thing is illusion.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

It was late summer 2001. I was 63 years old and on top of the world; and I very much liked the view. It felt like the zenith of my life as a man of business and investment, as a husband and father who had lived his life exceedingly well. And yet, I was convinced that there was more successes ahead for me.

I wasn’t interested in taking it easy any time soon.

I had recently retired from Alliance Capital where I began as its chairman of the international division in 1993. That post, in the heady and rarefied universe of global finance, came after rising through the upper ranks of its parent company, Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, the third largest life insurance company in America and its wholly owned investment subsidiary, Equitable Capital Management Corporation. I was also thrilled to be launching the Africa Millennium Fund, my own operation. With it, I was seeking to realize my life’s dream of creating a Western-style investment fund to drive much needed capital to a continent practically starving for development capital.