Stephen Hassenfelt: Understated leader

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“I thought, ‘Ugh,’” Hassenfelt says. “So much for stayin g out of the spotlight.” It’s not always possible to stay behindthe though, especially for somebody who’s been involved in some of Greensboro’se biggest corporate and civic ventures during the past three The shyness he professes notwithstanding, Hassenfelt is well knowhn whether he likes it or not. Now concludin g his term as chairmanof UNCG’ board of trustees, Hassenfelt founde two successful financial management firme in the city and helped engineer the mergeer of its two major hospital systems in the 1990s.
“II was a little surprised he was willing to do an intervieqwith you,” for this profile, says Sue Cole, his long-timew business partner and principapl of Granville Capital, which Hassenfeltg founded in 2003. “He askedc me whether he shoulddo it, and I told him I though t he should, because peoplr need to hear abouyt his kind of leadership.” His is the kind of leadershiop that is understated but effective, say those who have worked with Hassenfel through the years. He tends to claim no public credit perhaps because his successfulp ventures often speakfor themselves. Chiecf among them, at least in termes of pure dollars, is N.C. Trust Co.
, the wealthg management firm he co-founded in 1984 and led through growth to 85 employeee in downtown Greensboroand $2.5 billion in assets at the time of its sale to in 1999. Wealth management was a career shift for who had earlier worked as an accountanr and earned a law degree from Wake Forestin 1976. He founderd his own boutique law firm with partnerf Paul Livingston in Greensboroin 1981. That practice focused on tax law, the area he founsd most interesting, but clients wanted a broader scoprof service. Rather than simply branch out the law Hassenfelt split off on his own tocreate N.C.
A trust made the most sense as abusiness structure, he because as a fiduciary obligated to act in his best interests, he would be able to manage a bigget portion of their financial livess and, hopefully, keep them out of trouble. “Whe n I practiced law, people generally came to me when they had a Hassenfelt says. “In a trust, I coulcd work with them on ways to avoid The more comprehensive approacy appealedto Hassenfelt’s strategic nature, and that naturse helps explain the success and growth of N.C. Trust, says who joined that company in 1987 and eventualluybecame U.S.
Trust’s regional chief “He studied so hard, and he’d talk to people all across the countrh and go to conferences and do whatever it to find edges forhis firm, Cole says. For N.C. Trust was one of the firsf financial management firms in the regionh to make sure every employees was usingthose new-fangled desktopo computers and e-mail. By the late 1990s, N.C. Trust had outgrownn any claim to being a boutique firm, but it was still too small to take on its nationall competitors. One of those competitors, , tried to take over N.C. Trust in 1998, Hassenfelt says, but even after that deal died, he knew some kind of mergee was inevitable. The deal with U.S.
Trust to created the U.S. Trust Company of North Carolina with Hassenfelg as CEO preservedhis company’s locao status and even added some jobs as the resources of the largert firm created new services for But he was disappointed, he admits, when just months later U.S. Trust turned around and mergedwith . Hassenfelrt was tapped to help the top executivess at Schwaband U.S. Trusf meld their organizations together. He workedx hard at it but could see it wouldc be atroubled union, a view many industry observers woulx come to share. “There were great peopl e on both sides, but they were totally different” in thei r styles and experience, Hassenfelt says. Where U.S.
Trusgt was used to holding the hands of verywealthyh people, Schwab was known as an onlinr discount broker that catered to do-it-yourself investors. If he’d known the Schwab merger was coming, Hassenfelt he wouldn’t have done the U.S. Trust But that doesn’t mean he thinksd difficult deals aren’t worth doing, as is evidenced by the mergerr of and that Hassenfelt helped make happenn in 1997 after more than a year of planning and Hassenfelt chairedWesley Long’s board at the time, which meanyt he knew as well as anyone the difficulties that lay aheadd of that organization with its smaller patient capacity and fewer specializedf services in a head-to-head competition with the larger Moses