Stefan Abrams’ Belated 60th Anniversary Report
Personal Narrative
STEFAN DENNIS ABRAMS. Home Address: 834 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10065-7047 (212-535-9429). Occupation and Office Address: Investment Manager. Bryden-Abrams Investment Management. 485 Madison Avenue, Suite 713, New York, NY 10022 (212-850-1127). Email: stefan@brydenabrams.com. House/Dorm: Eliot. Degrees: AB ’60 magna cum laude, MBA ’62. Spouse / Partner: Jan I. Shapiro. Children: Three. Grandchildren: Five.
After graduating Magna Cum Laude in 1960, I went directly to the Harvard Business School and received an MBA with honors in 1962. Immediately after graduation, I began a career on Wall Street as a research analyst in the firm of Loeb, Rhoades & Company. After several years there, including a two year stint as portfolio manager of a closed-end mutual fund called the Abacus Fund, I was invited to join the firm of Oppenheimer & Company, where I spent the next twenty years as a General Partner, Chief Investment Strategist and Co-Manager of the firm’s International Department, doing business all over Europe and much of Asia. I also created the firm’s high net worth client investment management department. During those years my wife and I purchased an apartment in Paris, where we spent much of the next 20 years. Following the sale of Oppenheimer to the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, I joined the Trust Company of the West (TCW) as a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager for more than 20 years. This gave us an opportunity to live for several years in Beverly Hills before returning to our home in Manhattan. TCW was eventually sold to Societe Generale, a French bank, and beginning in 2007, my son, Roy Abrams and I became partners in the investment management firm of Bryden-Abrams Investment Management LLC. During these years I have had the privilege of serving as a Trustee and Treasurer of the American Ballet Theatre, as a Trustee of Vassar College, of Concord Academy and as President of the Easthampton Tennis Club, the latter as testimony to my administrative skills rather than my playing ability. I have also served on several corporate boards including Westell Technologies, a developer and manufacturer of telecommunications equipment and later as Vice-Chairman of Digital Diagnostics, a medtech company which has received the first and only FDA approval of an AI based diagnostic system for the detection of diabetic retinopathy among the nation’s 38 million (and growing) diabetics, of whom more than 25,000 go blind each year for lack of proper diagnosis and treatment. In 1968 I married Jan I. Shapiro, a former buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue and a wonderful portrait artist in her own right. Together over the past 52 years, we have also enjoyed creating a highly-regarded collection of Austrian Secession furniture, paintings and silver. Jan currently lectures on this subject at the renowned Neue Galerie in Manhattan. We are blessed to have a son, Roy Abrams and a daughter, Cleo Horsburgh and five terrific grandchildren. As noted, Roy is my partner in the investment business and Cleo is a widely published partner of a leading landscape architecture firm based in Connecticut.
All in all, despite the loss of our younger son, Jed, we have been blessed in many more ways than I could possibly recount. I was disappointed that the events in Cambridge were cancelled due to the pandemic, but I remain hopeful that this country will get through this disease, the current civil unrest and the destructive policies of the current Administration, without lasting damage to the American democracy, from which each of us and our families have been among the most privileged beneficiaries.
