Theodore H. Pincus, founder in 1965 of the Financial Relations Board which became the biggest financial PR specialist firm and which was sold to the former True North Communications in 1999 for $40 million, died Sept. 30 in Chicago.
The firm had $32.5 million in fees in 1998 and 291 employees. It became a division of BSMG Worldwide which was owned by Interpublic and no longer reported its fee and employee totals separately. More recently it became part of the MWW Group which bought itself out from IPG last year.
Pincus was stricken about two years ago with multiple myeloma (cancer of the plasma cells in bone marrow). He wrote a three-part series starting in April 2010 for the Chicago Sun-Times describing his treatment.
Pincus called the disease incurable but treatable and expressed his thanks for “an incredibly lucky life,” adding, “In no way am I being short-changed.”
A partner in StevensGouldPincus as well as a columnist for the Sun-Times and involved in many other activities, Pincus said he had no thought of pulling back. His treatment included a five-week stem cell transplant sequence that returned his blood to near normal.
Pincus, in advance of his expected death, wrote an extensive “personal background update” which is carried below.
Surviving are his wife Sherri Barr Pincus, five children and 12 grandchildren.
The children are Dr. Anne Zitron Casey, molecular biologist, New York; Prof. Laura Pincus Hartman, DePaul University, Chicago; Jennifer Zitron Suomi, art educator, New York; Mark J. Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga, San Francisco, and Susan Pincus Sherman, veterinarian, Glencoe, Ill.
Personal Background Update
by Ted Pincus
Ted Pincus has the distinction of being the most disastrous quarterback in the history of American high school football. He followed this feat by achieving notoriety as the worst student in the US Air Force pilot training program.
Fortunately, he found better luck in working with words.
Mr. Pincus has been ranked by PR Week as one of the 20th century’s most influential communications executives. In 2002 he was named PR Professional of the Year by The Public Relations Society of America. Beyond pioneering the Investor Relations industry over the past 45 years, he has been a leading crusader for more open corporate disclosure and numerous concepts of corporate communications strategy now in wide usage. He also has been a leading advocate of more open, responsive U.S. government public diplomacy policies.
Mr. Pincus today is an educator, newspaper columnist, consultant and lecturer. He is the business columnist of the Chicago Sun Times, an adjunct finance professor at the DePaul University MBA program and advisor to corporate top management that have included both CEOs Jim Cantalupo and Charlie Bell of McDonalds during its recent dramatic turnaround, John Calamos of The Calamos Funds, Jim Tyree of Mesirow and others. He is also managing partner of Stevens Gould Pincus, a management consulting firm.
As a director of Business for Diplomatic Action, he serves with 30 other communications industry professionals who have formed a new organization that has conceived and sponsored new initiatives to counter anti-American sentiment abroad. Most recently, chairing a working session of The Ditchley Conference attended by UN, UK, US government and media officials, Mr. Pincus introduced new initiatives for U.S. public diplomacy including a plan for a Global e-Pal Program for teenager connectivity, and a plan for the first worldwide quarterly “fireside chat” to be conducted by The Secretary of State through live webcast and teleconference with simultaneous voice-over translation.
The firm he founded, The Financial Relations Board LLC, was the world’s oldest and largest financial public relations agency. In building the field of financial public relations, he was credited with the development of several ideas that won broadscale acceptance during the Sixties including “corporate transparency” and the quarterly global teleconference with investors.
Under his guidance as CEO through 2001 FRB was accorded more professional awards for outstanding programs than any other in the history of the field. This included the industry’s “Oscar”, the PRSA Silver Anvil for Investor Relations, in six years of the Nineties, and FRB was named The Distinguished Agency of the Year by Financial World and Equities magazines for thirteen consecutive years. By the time he sold the firm, it had become the nation’s third largest independent public relations agency of any kind, with a staff of 300 in five cities, representing over four per cent of all listed public companies in America. Its organic fee growth rate since 1980 had set a new industry record – 86 per cent per year.
Following his 2000 sale of FRB for $40 million to True North Communications, he served as Vice Chairman of its BSMG public relations group, the nation’s sixth largest general agency, and more recently as senior consultant to True North’s new parent Interpublic and its Weber Shandwick Group – the world’s largest PR unit.
Over his 48 year career, Mr. Pincus has been advisor on communications strategy to political candidates, the CEOs of more than 1000 publically held corporation, government agencies in the U.S. and abroad, as well as individuals as diverse as Nelson Rockefeller, Hugh Hefner, W. Clement Stone, Army Secretary Howard “Bo” Callaway, Walter E. Heller, Franklin A. Cole, former ABA Chairman Allen Stults, and Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga.
His ideas have been credited with focusing national recognition upon some of the nation’s most remarkable Wall Street successes, including EMC Corp. which was named Stock of the Decade for the Nineties, Citrix, Adobe Systems, Boston Properties, Alberto Culver, Radio Shack, General Growth Properties, Midas, Manpower, Samsonite, Walter Heller, Jenn-Aire, Jewel, Stone Container, Anixter, NYNEX, BEA Systems, Combined Insurance, Culligan, Upjohn, Volvo, The No-Load Mutual Fund Assn. Campaign to introduce the Money Market Funds,
The Chicago Board of Trade program to make Americans commodities-conscious, the world-wide introduction of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s International Monetary Market, and the REIT industry program that vastly broadened investor interest in real estate investment trusts in the 90’s. For these and others, FRB innovations over the years included development of financial market intelligence canvassing, the corporate investment profile, and the computerized matching of companies with institutional investor prospects. Also specializing in financial reputation-building for professional service organizations, FRB has assisted firm like KPMG, Kemper, Charles Schwab, Seyfarth Shaw, Jenner & Block, and CS First Boston.
Mr. Pincus is a nationally recognized author, lecturer and outspoken critic of corporate communications. He presently is a director of Business for Diplomatic Action, and in recent times has been a public affairs consultant to the U.S. Commerce Dept., The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and the American Jewish Committee. He is author of a book on Wall Street humor, two books published by The American Management Assn., and wrote the lead chapter of Dow Jones Irwin’s textbook on corporate communications. Over the years, his articles on communications policy have appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL ST JOURNAL, FORTUNE, and other national magazines.
He has served as chairman of 44 national and regional conferences on Investor Relations and has been frequent lecturer at forums of the Financial Executives Institute, The National Investor Relations Institute, Nasdaq, graduate business schools at University of Illinois and Northwestern, and the Medill Graduate School of Journalism at Northwestern. In past years he has conducted two-day seminars on IR strategy for CEO’s and CFO’s in each region of the U.S. sponsored by the National Assn. of Securities Dealers. He has been a featured speaker at national symposiums held by Forbes, Financial World, and others.
In 1960 he served as a professional consultant to the Nelson Rockefeller presidential nomination campaign and in 1968 was co-chairman of the Illinois Rockefeller Committee during the nomination campaign. In 1974-75 he served as a communications consultant to Army Secretary Howard Callaway in planning a campaign to boost volunteer recruiting. In 1975-76, he served as a professional consultant to then Illinois Treasurer Candidate (and later U.S. Senator) Alan J. Dixon and directed campaign communications.
In 1983 the Reagan Administration named him chairman of a special USAID advisory mission to the government of Jamaica in a two-year project to improve that nation’s image in the international investment and business community. In 1990 he served as Public Relations Chairman and Advisory Board member of The Four Freedoms Foundation, a private arm of the U.S. Information Agency.
In 2000, as Marketing Chairman of The Illinois Coalition (of over 300 technology companies), he authored the marketing segment of the strategic plan that Governor George Ryan used to win passage of his $1.9 Venture Tech legislation.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Pincus was Associate Editor of Omnibus magazine and freelance writer published in Chicago Tribune Sunday magazine and other periodicals. Prior he was a financial news writer in the Far East, USAF Information Officer for the F-100 Thunderbird Aerial Demonstration Team, and Chief of the Radio-TV Branch, U.S. Forces-Far East headquarters, Tokyo. He holds a degree from Indiana University where he studied Journalism. In his pro bono work, Mr. Pincus is a charter member of The National Investor Relations Institute Senior Roundtable and currently a director of The Illinois Coalition, The American Jewish Committee Midwest Chapter, and The North Bank. In past years he had been an advisor to The U.S. Information Agency, a member of the advisory board of Nasdaq, a director of The Chicago Film Festival, a director of three corporations, a 17-year trustee of The Gateway House Foundation, pioneer network of drug abuse treatment centers, communications advisor to the Crusade of Mercy of Metropolitan Chicago, a founding director of The Chicago Youth Success Foundation, and five times chairman of the Communications Industry annual campaign for Chicago’s Jewish United Fund.
He is a current member of The World Presidents Organization, The New York Society of Security Analysts, and the Senior Roundtable of The National Investor Relations Institute.
Mr. Pincus was the recipient of The American Jewish Committee’s 1993 Civic Achievement Award and was named to The Illinois Entrepreneurial Hall of Fame. In 1998 he was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young, Merrill Lynch and Nasdaq for the Midwest Services Industry. He holds the PRSA Silver Anvil and 52 other national and regional awards. He also has a 1725 ranking in the U.S. Chess Federation.