Rockefeller Chief McDonald Dies in Apparent Suicide

Charles Stein
Bloomberg
Sep. 19, 2009

Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) --James McDonald, chief executive officer of New York investment firm Rockefeller & Co., died Sunday from a single gunshot wound that was probably self- inflicted, officials in Massachusetts said.

His body was found in a car behind an auto dealership in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, said Gregg Miliote, a spokesman for the Bristol County district attorney’s office in New Bedford. While police didn’t find a note, McDonald had called his wife earlier in the day, Miliote said.

McDonald, who was 56, headed Rockefeller & Co. for more than eight years, building the former family office founded by oil man John D. Rockefeller in 1882 into a wealth manager with $25 billion in client assets. Paris-based Societe Generale SA last year bought 37 percent of Rockefeller Financial Services, parent of Rockefeller Co., to add wealthy clients in the U.S.

“He was a highly regarded figure in the business here in Boston,” said Tim Vaill, chief executive officer of Boston Private Financial Holdings Inc., which competes in the same field.

A graduate of Harvard college, McDonald ran Pell, Rudman & Co., a Boston-based wealth management firm, before joining Rockefeller. He was a board member at NYSE Euronext and chairman of New York’s Japan Society, a nonprofit organization that provides information about Japan, according to its Web site.

McDonald was appointed to CIT Group Inc.’s board of directors in October 2007 and retired from the money-losing lender in May, two months before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. refused to guarantee the company’s debt, driving it toward a possible bankruptcy.

Family Office

Rockefeller & Co. was set up in 1979 by members of the Rockefeller family as a successor to the family office, according to a company release. The firm today manages money for individuals, families and institutions, according to its Web site.

Thomas Coyle, editor of Family Wealth Report, a newsletter based in Bangor, Maine, said the firm still manages money for members of the Rockefeller family. In a telephone interview, he described the company as a “high-touch operation” that provides trust services, tax help and concierge services to well-to-do clients.

At a press conference announcing the Societe Generale deal, McDonald said the firm would offer services to clients with at least $30 million to invest.

“Jim McDonald was an exceptional individual who provided strong leadership of Rockefeller and Co. for over eight years,” said Colin Campbell, the firm’s chairman of the board, in an e- mailed statement.

Austin Shapard, Rockefeller’s chief operating and financial officer, has assumed leadership of the firm on an interim basis, the company said in the statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Charles Stein in Boston at [email protected].












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