Stephen,83,and Samuel,53,used to do a lot of sailboat racing together. “That’s how we learned to work together as a team,” says Stephen. That experience was critical to the 1989 launch of the Alpine International Real Estate Equity fund,the first global real estate offering of its kind. Not only did that wed the son’s experience in real estate and REITS with the father’s decades of asset and portfolio management,it taught Samuel a valuable professional—and personal—lesson.“In the late 1980s,we were so big in the real estate sector that we found we were moving share prices around,” Samuel says.“I expressed concern to my dad. He said look farther afield,broaden your horizons and look for other types of opportunities.”That’s how the first international real estate fund was born. Today Alpine runs nine funds,but that first lesson remains key,Samuel says.“Take a broad,holistic approach not only to investing,but also to life.”
Ronald,62,started R.W. Rogé in 1986 as a financial planning and advisory business. He first started stock picking in the early 1970s but found that he wasn’t very good at it. He was better at finding good fund managers—like his son Steven,28,who joined the company in 1997.“I’m really good at strategy and looking at the big picture,”Ronald says.“Steve is very good at finding undervalued stocks.”Steven might have been a longtime disciple of Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett,but his first job at Dad’s office was making copies and doing other menial chores. After seven years of learning the business,Steven become portfolio manager of the Rogé Partners fund,which launched in late 2004. The fund got off to a good start,posting total returns of 10% and 21% in 2005 and 2006,respectively,but cooled off in 2007 and,of course,2008. But then that just makes the lessons instilled by the father all the more important.“When you are a value investor the most important thing is patience,” Ronald says.“Warren Buffett watched Coca-Cola for 25 years before he purchased it.”