February 16, 2001

New York investment manager Julian H. Robertson Jr.(left), the founder and chairman of Tiger Management LLC, will be the dinner speaker at NCCBI's 59th Annual Meeting on March 21. His appearance was arranged by NCCBI Chairman Mac Everett and Paul Fulton.

Robertson will be joined as a headliner for the annual event at the Raleigh Convention and Conference Center by Gov. Mike Easley, who will be the luncheon speaker. A crowd of more than 1,000 is expected for the event, which will include seminars and a trade show.

The 67-year-old Robertson grew up in Salisbury. He graduated from the Episcopal High School in 1951 and four years later earned his degree in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

After a two-year stint as an officer in the U.S. Navy, he joined Kidder Peabody & Co. in 1957 as a sales trainee. He became a vice president and stockholder in 1966 and later was made a director. In 1974, he was named chairman and CEO for Webster Management Corp., a subsidiary of Kidder Peabody.

Robertson founded Tiger Management in 1980 and has since been one of Wall Street's true high-stakes players, building Tiger into the world's largest hedge fund group and turning huge profits for investors such as author Tom Wolfe and songwriter Paul Simon. As recently as 1998, Tiger had $22.8 billion in assets, and had compounded investors' money at 32 percent annually for nearly 18 years. The company wasn't immune, however, to the downward spiral in the market, and Robertson announced last March that Tiger was returning capital to investors.

Despite the decline at the end, Robertson's 20-year track record was spectacular, generating 25 percent in annualized returns and outperforming the S&P by 7.5 percent over the same period. Today, Tiger stills maintains a 23 percent ownership in USAirways, representing Robertson's single largest stake.

Last fall, he and his wife Josie, a member of UNC's Board of Visitors, pledged $24 million to traditional athletic rivals UNC and Duke University to create a pioneering collaborative program that will recruit and support extraordinary undergraduate students who will study at both campuses. The program is called The Robertson Scholars Fund.

Easley, 50, succeeded four-term Gov. Jim Hunt in January. The second of seven children who grew up on a tobacco farm in Nash County, he graduated, with honors, from UNC in 1972 and earned a law degree, cum laude, from North Carolina Central University in 1976.

A former district attorney in Brunswick, Bladen and Columbus counties, he was elected state attorney general in 1992 and was re-elected to a second term in 1996.

Easley also easily won last May's Democratic gubernatorial primary, outdistancing popular two-term Lt. Gov. Dennis Wicker. He then defeated former Charlotte mayor Richard Vinroot last Nov. 7 to win the state's highest office.

The festivities on March 21 will begin with the annual business meeting of the full board of directors, followed by the luncheon and Easley's address. Seminars are scheduled for the afternoon in addition to the Information Exchange trade show, which annually showcases about 50 companies and organizations.

The NCCBI reception will begin at 5:15 p.m. The dinner, with Robertson as the keynoter, will follow at 6:30. NCCBI members should look for their invitations and registration materials to arrive in the mail in the coming weeks.

Sen. Jesse Helms, who has represented North Carolina in the U.S. Senate for 28 years and who currently serves as chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will receive the Citation for Distinguished Public Service.

Sen. Helms was first elected to the Senate in 1972 after a varied business career. He was executive vice president, vice chairman of the board and assistant CEO of Capitol Broadcasting Co. in Raleigh from 1960 until his election to the Senate. From 1960 until he filed for the Senate, Helms wrote and presented daily editorials on WRAL-TV and the Tobacco Radio Network. His editorials were printed regularly in more than 200 newspapers throughout the United States. They were broadcast by more than 70 radio stations in North Carolina.

Paul Z. Rizzo, who has enjoyed successful careers in both the private and public sectors, will receive the Citation for Distinguished Citizenship.

A native of Upstate New York who came to UNC-Chapel Hill on a football scholarship, Rizzo currently is a partner in Franklin Street Partners, the private investment trust and management firm in Chapel Hill.

Rizzo went to work for IBM in 1958 and quickly rose through several executive positions, including serving as senior vice president and group executive responsible for product develop. In 1983 he was elected vice chairman of the IBM board of directors, the position he held when he retired from the company in 1987.

That's when he was recruited as dean of the Kenan-Flagler Business School at Carolina. In five years as the business school dean he is credited with significantly raising the profile of the school and creating a highly-regarded emphasis on international business. He retired from the business school in 1992.

Rizzo serves as a director of Johnson & Johnson, Morgan Stanley, Ryder Systems and McGraw Hill.

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