Friends, family, and public finance colleagues of Robert Jacobs will gather at a memorial Saturday to pay their respects to the longtime healthcare banker who also managed the municipal bond departments at the former Banc of America Securities and the former PaineWebber.
Jacobs died at his North Carolina home on Jan. 24 after a long battle with multiple myeloma. He was 64. He is survived by his daughter Lauren Thurmond, his sons Charlie Jacobs and Robert Jacobs, and grandson Charlie Thurmond.
Former colleagues and his son Charlie, who works in the derivatives sector for Kensington Capital Advisors, called Jacobs a traditionalist who prided himself on putting clients' interests first and helping his younger colleagues advance.
"He really enjoyed working with clients and helping them get the right financings in place," Charlie Jacobs said. He was especially proud of his work on the original Charlotte Convention Center financing in the early 1990s to pave the way for the facility's construction.
"He enjoyed being a part of the financings in Charlotte that helped build things and helped the city grow and also working on healthcare transactions that helped hospitals expand," Charlie Jacobs said of his father.
As the younger Jacobs pondered a finance career, he said his father, noting his acumen for math, steered him towards derivatives even though he had a skeptical eye for the product due to their complexity.
"He was very mindful that an organization understood the types of transactions they were doing," he said.
Jacobs was born in Boston where he cultivated a life-long love of sailing. He moved South to attend the University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill. He began his finance career after graduation working for the North Carolina Medical Care commission, a conduit agency.
He joined the former PaineWebber in the 1980s as a healthcare banker, working his way up to managing director status and eventually managing the healthcare group and later running the municipal bond department including underwriting, sales and trading.
He left with a group of bankers to move to Morgan Stanley in 2000. He joined Bank of America, where its broker-dealer arm was then known as Banc of America Securities, in 2002 as a managing director in healthcare banking. He did stints there heading up its healthcare and specialty banking groups and the bond department including trading, underwriting and sales.
Jacobs left the firm on disability as he battled cancer in 2007, according to his son.
Jim Ladas, securities manager at Wells Fargo who previously worked with Jacobs at Bank of America, said that Mr. Jacobs continued to serve as his mentor. "Jacobs was straightforward," Ladas said. "He always gave you his honest opinion whether you liked it or not. And usually he was right."
Jacobs was also always available for a call whether it was early on Saturday morning or late Sunday night. He would help out anyone and everyone that he could.
"He was a real principled guy," recalled Bruce Gurley, a healthcare banker at Morgan Stanley who worked with Jacobs when he began his career as an analyst at PaineWebber in Charlotte. "He always did what he thought was right for clients" regardless of the firm's profit. "Having a manager like Rob for a mentor was a great thing."
Kurt Powell, a director at Wells Fargo who had also worked with Jacobs at Bank of America, said Jacobs enjoyed conversation.
"He always had really good industry stories," Powell said. "He seemed to have known everyone at one point or time, or had at least interacted with them at one time."
Jacobs enjoyed sailing in both the Caribbean and Maine, and often took co-workers sailing on his boat - a 51-foot Hinckley.
He was also a regular at Greenwich Village's Corner Bistro in New York City. "Every time I went there with him, the bartender knew who Robert was, and Robert always sat in the same spot," said Powell.
Mr. Jacobs was also a frequent customer at Peter Luger, the famous Brooklyn steak house.
"There are few people I have ever been to Peter Luger with who could walk in and get a table right away," Powell said.
