The Savage Way

Frank Savage's is an unlikely success story. Raised in segregated Washington, DC, by his mother, a hairdresser and entrepreneur with little formal education, Savage's career has taken him around the world as a globetrotting financier. From his first banking job at Citibank to his current position as Chairman Emeritus of Howard University, The Savage Way shares the life and business lessons he learned along the way. This memoir relates the many starts and stops, successes and failures in his long career, from his involvement in the collapse of Enron, to his experience investing in Africa, to his days as a competitive yachtsman—always guided by the wisdom of the mother who taught him to transcend all limits.

• A powerful memoir of an inspiring business leader
• Savage is the current Chairman of his alma mater, Howard University, and the CEO of the global financial services company Savage Holdings LLC

A rare and inspiring story of personal and professional challenge and ultimate triumph, The Savage Way is a memoir that offers powerful inspiration and wisdom for tomorrow's business leaders.

Foreword ix

Prologue 1

Chapter 1 Too Much Money 9

Chapter 2 Getting In, Struggling Out, Getting Right 35

Chapter 3 La Savage, the Source and Inspiration 69

Chapter 4 The Journey to True Origins 99

Chapter 5 My Journey Deepens 127

Chapter 6 The Longer Road Home 147

Chapter 7 Africa Calls Once Again 167

Chapter 8 Walking Over a Bridge Not Burned 203

Chapter 9 Sailing Lolita, Pulling It All Together 227

Epilogue 255

Lolita Racing Record 259

Acknowledgments 263

Index 265

FRANK SAVAGE, Chairman Emeritus of Howard University, served as chairman of Howard University from 1997 until 2004 and is credited with spearheading the widely successful Campaign for Howard. He is CEO of Savage Holdings LLC, a global financial services company. Prior to forming Savage Holdings, he was chairman of Alliance Capital Management International, a division of Alliance Capital Management, a $700 billion asset management subsidiary of AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company. Mr. Savage has had a distinguished career in international banking, corporate finance, and global investment management. He serves on the boards of several corporations and nonprofit organizations, including Bloomberg LP and the New York Academy of Medicine, having previously served on the boards of Lockheed Martin, Qualcomm, and the New York Philharmonic. Savage earned a BA from Howard University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins’ Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Hofstra University and an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Howard University. Perhaps the award he is proudest of is the prestigious Lord Nelson Trophy as 2003 overall winner of the annual Antigua Race Week Regatta.

By the standards of the America into which he was born, Frank Savage was about as unlikely a success story as you could find. Born in 1938, to the hardscrabble world of the North Carolina tobacco fields, raised in segregated Washington, DC, by a single mother—a hairdresser with little formal education—and sent to all-black schools, young Frank’s odds of making it in the “white world,” especially the world of high finance, were virtually nil. Yet, thanks to his God-given intelligence and the sense of self-worth, drive, and determination—not to mention a pronounced aptitude for business—instilled in him by his extraordinary mother, the self-styled “Madame La Savage International,” Frank Savage forged a career that has taken him around the world as a globe-trotting banker, venture capitalist, Fortune 500 asset manager, and world-class competitive yachtsman.

A compelling, deeply personal account from one of the first African-Americans to cross the color barrier and find success in the world of high finance, The Savage Way takes us on a fascinating journey through seventy-four years of a life very well-lived. Exhibiting a novelist’s gift for vivid scene-setting and the apt metaphor, Frank Savage moves relentlessly from Jim Crow America to the executive suites at Citibank, from Madame La Savage’s hair salon (where he learned his first and most important lessons on business and life) to his experiences as a banker and entrepreneur in New York, the Middle East, and his beloved Africa. And along the way, Savage shares priceless lessons he’s learned about the importance of self-confidence and adherence to one’s core values, the indispensable need for integrity, and an unwavering sense of ethics in all of one’s dealings, both in business and in life.

So much more than another dry, self-serving business memoir, The Savage Way is an inspiring narrative full of warmth, adventure, extraordinary achievement and tragic loss that is sure to resonate in the hearts and minds of all readers long after they’ve finished reading it.