Fred Ruopp
Profile -- (Winter 2000-2001 Newsletter)
[interview below]
Fred Ruopp knows a good investment when he sees it. With
$800 million dollars under management, and as one of the top-rated
money managers in the nation, he'd better. What's the best
investment in College education these days? Thomas Aquinas
College. "You can bank on that," he'd say.
For almost 20 years, Ruopp (rhymes with "up") has
been a member of the College's Board of Governors - six years
as its Chairman - and has lent his vast expertise in financial
concerns in overseeing the College's budget and financial
affairs, including the College's $9 million endowment which
is managed by the investment counseling firm, Everett Harris
Co.
Ruopp was recently featured in Kiplinger's as one of 20 elite
money managers who have teamed up with myMoneyPro.com to offer
portfolio management services to investors with accounts that
up to now were too small to interest a top-flight money manager.
Ruopp and his colleages have risk-adjusted rates of return
that rank them in the top quartile of their peers, as measured
by Nelson's Money Manager Review.
hy would this top-flight money manager have an interest in
a small Catholic liberal arts school? "Books," he
says. "I was born and bred on books."
Growing up in Elmhurst, Illinois, Ruopp's parents used to
drag the whole family - Fred, his brother, and two sisters
- to the town library twice a week to check out books. They
were expected to read them. "It was just something we
always did." Indeed, the habit endured and until recently,
he read two books a week as a matter of course.
After graduating from high school, he enrolled in Elmhurst
College, dabbling in general business courses and the liberal
arts. He found he had a knack for the business courses, and
after two years, transferred to the University of Illinois,
Champaign-Urbana, where he became a finance major, earning
a Bachelor of Science, Banking and Finance degree with honors
in 1952. He also became a member of Beta Gamma Sigma, the
scholastic honorary society in business, to which he still
belongs.
With the Korean War then in full swing, Ruopp did a 13-month
tour in Korea with an Army artillery battery unit. He returned
to Chicago and got a job in the trust division of the First
National Bank of Chicago. At the same time, he started pursuing
a Masters of Business Administration in Finance at Kellog
School of Northwestern University. He met a charming young
lady who typed his thesis for him, Joyce Bowker. They married
the following year and raised two sons, Frederick, Jr. and
Christopher.
With his MBA in Finance in hand, Ruopp started rising through
the trust division of the bank to become a senior portfolio
manager handling a large share of pension and profit-sharing
trusts. In 1963, he and Joyce decided to move to warmer climes,
and they picked California.
Ruopp took a job with the old Crocker Citizens Bank, doing
trust and investment work, and soon thereafter was hired as
a senior analyst and portfolio manager for the Occidental
Life Insurance Company (which later became Transamerica).
Six years later, he was recruited to Lehman Brothers' New
York City office to manage the accounts of the firm's partners
and those of their families.
But in 1971, after getting some Wall Street experience under
his belt, and with about $9 million in asset management in
tow, he decided to return to California and, along with a
friend from Occidental, opened Chelsea Management Co. Since
then, the downtown Los Angeles firm has grown to 15 employees,
including four partners and four senior associates. The firm
services a wide variety of clients, including insurance companies,
pensions, profit-sharing accounts, and charitable trusts,
from New York to Hawaii. Ruopp served as president of the
organization until 1994, when he became its chairman and chief
executive officer, which he remains today.
Ruopp is a Chartered Financial Analyst, a Chartered Investment
Counselor, and a member of the Institute of Chartered Financial
Analysts, the Los Angeles Financial Analysts Society, and
the Investment Counsel Association of America. He was awarded
Senior Security Analyst designation by the New York Society
of Security Analysts. He is also director of several corporations.
Ruopp joined the Board of Thomas Aquinas College in 1982.
He served as Chairman from 1986-92. He was Chairman of the
Board's Finance Committee for 10 years, and has served as
Chairman of the Endowment and Investment Committee for the
past 5 years. He also serves as director and finance committee
member of St. Anne's Maternity Home, and as a finance committee
member of the Blind Childrens Center. He is a member of Our
Lady of Grace Parish in Encino, California, and a Knight of
Malta.
Ruopp's move to sunny California affected the rest of his
family from the Midwest. His three siblings and their families,
as well as his parents, have relocated near him. His wife,
Joyce, however, passed away in 1998.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Winter 2001
Interview with Dr. Smith:
Q. How did someone like you in the world of finance become
interested in a classical liberal arts college?
About 20 years ago, I got a letter in the mail from [founding
President] Dr. Ron McArthur, who told about the history and
purpose of the College and explained why the College needed
funds. Every couple of years or so, you get an interesting
appeal like that and you think it deserves to succeed. So
I sent in a small gift.
I then got a call from Norm Booth, who was working as a development
officer for the College. He thanked me and asked if he might
come by and show me how plans for the College were progressing.
I said, "Sure." Soon thereafter I visited the campus
and sat in on some classes and met Dr. McArthur and others.
I became interested in the whole program and could see that
it made a great deal of sense. I could see that, in retrospect,
this was the kind of program I wished I had taken, a classic
liberal arts program. All my life, I've been reading and trying
to fill in the holes of my learning. The College seemed to
me to be the place where one could fill in those holes.
They asked me to join a committee and sit in on a board meeting,
and then things progressed from there and they asked me to
join the Board, and so I did.
Q. Have you tried to keep up with the College's curriculum?
Sure, to some extent, the literature especially. But the
one thing I've found when you read these Great Books is that
you generally need to talk about them afterwards with somebody
to see if you're getting the point or not. For the last several
years, I've been attending the annual Summer Seminar weekend
at the College, and I can truly see how important it is to
be able to discuss these works in small group settings.
Q. What have you been reading lately?
ostly a lot of history. I'm reading Jacques Barzun's From
Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500
to the Present, which is a marvelous book about the history
of modern civilization. I also just finished Paul Johnson's
History of the American People, and a fascinating biography
on Patrick O'Brian, [A Life Revealed] the acclaimed novelist
who wrote so much about life in the Royal Navy in the Age
of Sail. I read E.M. Forester also.
Q. What has been the biggest challenge for the College
since you've been involved?
Money. No question about it. The College has been fantastically
successful in educating students. What students receive here
is extraordinarily good. But the College started without any
funding at all. Slowly you can see it being built, piece-by-piece,
by the grace of God. The campus is now more than 50% built
and you can see down the road where it's going. But it still
won't happen unless we raise the funds to make it happen.
I'm sure that will occur and you can certainly see how important
the spiritual dimension then becomes.
Q. What will be the biggest challenge for the College
in the future?
In about five years, the College will hit its maximum student
body of 350 students. One of the challenges the College will
have to face then will be how to expand our mission. What
will we do? We have more and more students seeking admission
to the College and we don't want to turn any away. It's only
natural that we'll have to start thinking of how to carry
on this mission elsewhere and that, of course, will present
huge challenges for us.
Q. How do the College's financial operations rate with
other organizations you've seen over the years?
The people at the College have done a very good job stretching
resources to ensure that whatever is spent needs to be spent.
Through the help of the Board, the dedication of Ron McArthur,
and now that of Tom Dillon and all the other people in development
and on the Board, we've been expanding our giving base and
are starting, slowly, to solve the money problem.
Q. To what extent do you think the College is a good investment?
For one's time, energy, interest, and money, it's an extraordinarily
good investment. Every dollar that has been given has been
wisely and prudently spent. The College is making a difference
in the world and in the Church. As the College grows, and
as the alumni pool continues to grow, that difference will
only increase.
Q. Are you surprised by that difference?
Not so much surprised as gratified. Christianity has always
been the driving force in Western Civilization - whether in
science, literature, art, architecture, whatever - you can
see its influence throughout history. Of course, because the
College is doing its part to restore authentic Christianity
in the modern world, we should expect it to have enduring
effect and appeal.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Winter 2001
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