"THEN AND NOW"

An immigrant finds two friends in America

I first landed in the United States as a student on January 2, 1962. I was here for six weeks. I discovered America. On January 17, 1965, I emigrated to the U.S. with $700 in my pocket. I discovered Wall Street. In 1966, I discovered Saul Steinberg.

In the late 1960s, the world was already in a turmoil. As Felix Rohayton said, "We thought after the war there would be the American century. In fact, the American century lasted only twenty years." It took me no time to recognize that America is still giving unlimited opportunities. Despite the riots, the burning of the cities, there are people, individuals, who build something and create wealth. Actually, I was an immigrant. An immigrant does nothing but consider everyday problems as first he has to have an apartment, a car, furniture, and therefore it is difficult not to respect hard work and success.

In the 1960s, actually the financial world created many heros, some of the great conglomerates like Sir James Goldsmith in England, Sam Belzberg in Vancouver, have put together companies, created great organizations and have shown the world that with intellect, daring and knowledge, you can have a shortcut on the way up. This is the world where Saul Steinberg projected himself. The only difference was that Saul Steinberg was very young. He started with a small computer leasing company which in retrospect was a revolution. Computers were new ideas for the sixties, and he was in fact for the IBM 360s what Ed Murrow was for London during the war. This is what propelled him to some of the most successful people in the U.S.

At the age of twenty-seven, he acquired a $2 billion insurance company, Reliance Insurance, and two years later when he was twenty-nine, he wanted to buy Chemical Bank. He brought along whole series of people who had dazzling interest and ambition. His president, Bernard Schwartz -- goodness knows what age he is today -- is head of Loral Satellites whose predecessor he established in 1972. He created a reputation for the Hodes family where the son was a partner Wilkie & Gallagher.

As a matter of fact, Steinberg was everywhere. He made speeches, he gave interviews, he spoke about the computer industry, not only leasing but software. And he has proved that with the judicious issue of stocks you can be in the container business, in computer software, in opinion research. In other words, he was the computerized New York City on the way up, creating jobs, giving opportunities for talented executives. He was the intellectual and corporate-wise upwardly mobile company.

Everybody knew his name. People wanted to work for Leasco. He once told me, when I first met him at Linden Place, Great Neck, that already Leasco, the young five-year-old company, moved six times. Now, look at it from the point of view of a upwardly mobile immigrant. In my eyes, the American dream with Saul Steinberg, his family, with his chauffeur-driven limousine, with my meetings with him in the Plaza Hotel, in my eyes the American dream could come true.

In retrospect I should have asked myself if Manhattan, which looked for an immigrant, something frightening, something big, something of historical value, but almost unconquerable to a young guy who just landed in Manhattan on 49th Street in 1964, how do I find myself for a drink opposite Saul Steinberg. Eventually we discovered that we were both historians and actually worked with many historical figures. I asked myself the question, where was Napoleon at the age of thirty-five when he found himself Emperor of France?

My net worth was definitely increased in 1966 with my ownership of Leasco. I got married at the Plaza Hotel. My wife Ellen, who didn't come from a plutocratic family, met Steinberg in his home in Long Island in 1968. In our lifetime, pulled by Leasco and Steinberg, the American dream has come true. In fact, Steinberg was the principal help to get my younger brother out of Hungary and into America. But it was a worth for Leasco, for its executives, for Bernie Schwartz, for Julius Steinberg, his father, to us and many other analysts, he created a world which American boys had dreamt about, the same way Napoleon marched into Paris.

Then and there, in contrast to the sad reality of the late sixties, Steinberg stood at the Chase Manhattan Bank's auditorium in front of five hundred securities analysts and investment bankers and stated, "Yes, we talked to Chemical." That was the moment at the age of twenty-nine, when a young man was crowned to be a superachiever of the 1960s.

Don't forget, this was the age of Abby Hoffman. It was the age when Abby Hoffman and his crowd tied down the principal of Columbia University to his desk. It so happens that my father-in-law and his wife lived in Massachusetts in the same town as Abby Hoffman's father. They were decent middle-class people. He sometimes asked in the evening when they were strolling on the street, Dr. Likar, explain to me what have I done?

In 1969, I had the first desire to write about Saul Steinberg and spent a few Saturday mornings with his parents. The family, as I was told, consisted of two parts, two boys and two girls, but the two girls were age-wise miles apart. I once asked Julius Steinberg and Mrs. Steinberg how they prepared for this career. Their answer was very modest. "He's our son. We have done nothing unusual but taught him hard work and gave him ambition."

Later on, and it jumps about six years, in 1975 Steinberg has shown a remarkable savvy for the stock market. Basically he has proven that for him the sixties were not a fluke, that he was a businessman. He reduced his capitalization from 27 million to 7 million shares and with two different preferreds outstanding, he stock was $5.00 a share. I analyzed the company again and put my money for the second time behind Steinberg. I bought mainly his preferred stock on which he paid dividends back three years tax free. The convertible preferred went from $22 eventually to $100 when he exchanged them and went private. My two sons, Gregory and Justin, went to school and college on Steinberg's brilliance in the stock market.

That was a new period for him and a new period for me. Our lives, with the dazzling recovery of Reliance, changed. He became very rich and I became comfortable. Then it was a new world. The opportunity for individual achievement was still there, but the revolutions were over. America was moving towards respectability and my two sons adopted that spirit. The 1980s were when President Reagan demanded respect for America. In the 1990s, we have developed into a respectable society.

America was yearning for an identity and a world where monetary success is still important, when however the expression of our spirit and our culture is just as important. My son Justin, the same age, thirty-one, approximately the age when the young Napoleon's career shifted, has devoted himself to writing. His writings, satirical, family oriented, actually would have been quite popular in Germany and Austria a hundred years ago. He writes about families, the people around us, in a satirical but humanitarian manner. He is the son of the 21st century. His latest book, Fifty Relatives Worse Than Yours, in fact calls for all families a request and demand and desire to be satisfied with what we have. I, of course, try to look at it not as a father but as a historian, as I was all my life. The 21st century will have tremendous problems. It is not only the energy crisis but the monetary crisis, again, the revolutions in Europe, the hidden problems of global warming and hurricanes, corporate corruption, the elimination of pensions, unemployment in key industries. It would stretch the brain of some of the best political leaders we have ever had.

The last president who made an attempt but was turned down was Nixon. Historians now prove that Nixon was a benevolent domestic president. The complexities of governing the United States with Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, balance of trade deficit, requires a modern Bismarck.

My son Justin is really conveying a message - don't complain. Be happy with what you have. Cope with reality. Be good for the rest of your life.

I sometimes wonder if Saul Steinberg were not sixty-six but thirty, with the wealth of the Kennedys or the wealth of the Steinbergs, he would run for office. If he would achieve the highest office in the land, he had the brain to rule and act on the whole horizon. He lent $50 million to Golda Meir to take 50,000 Romanian Jews to Israeli. He gave tremendous sums to medical schools. He is a trustee of his own university. He had a large family. He is not a mean person. He had, however, an all-encompassing brain.

My son Justin and Saul Steinberg never met. Maybe they will exchange and converge opinions. Justin will tell the people to be better people and Saul Steinberg would pick up energy, like Winston Churchill at the age of sixty-five, and will have his finest hour.

(Article 12- posted November 9, 2005)

e-mail: mlikar@aol.com

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