In the municipal bond business, investment bankers sometimes put more than thei reputations on the line. Just ask amateur pilot Samuel H. Trowe, an executive vice president at First American Municipals Inc.
In 1991, Trowe and First American's president, Patricia K. Poprik, were flying to Maine to meet with Treasurer Samuel Shapiro to discuss uderwriting some of the state's debt.
As their plane approached the airport in Augusta, visibility was poor. Low clouds, heavy rain, and fog prevented Trowe, who was piloting the small rented plane, from landing.
"We went down to minimums, about 200 feet about ground level, and we couldn't find the airport," Trowe, 48, recalled.
"They went over [the airport] once and aborted the landing," said Shapiro, who remembers the incident from the ground. "All I can say is I was glad I wasn't with them."
Later, after a break in the clouds allowed for a successful landing the two bankers looked a little pale, Shapiro said. "They weren't interested in selling in living."
Trowe, however, said he was unfazed. "As far as I'm concerned it was normal stuff," he said with the aplomb of a seasoned airman.
As an executive vice president of four-year-old First American, Trowe travels throughout the country in search of new clients for the New York-based firm.
Whenever possible Trowe likes to fly- with himself in the cockpit.
"There's a thrill associated with flying that you cannot duplicate anywhere," said Trowe, who has been a pilot for close to 30 years. "It's a feeling that's ... Wow, it's hard to express."
"If I ever retire from this business. I'll probably teach flying," Trowe said. "But I wouldn't do it for a living because it wouldn't be fun anymore."
Trowe is a licensed commercial pilot and holds rating enabling him to fly multiengine planes and to go up even when bad weather forces him to fly on instruments alone. That leaves him a step away from qualifying to pilot a jumbo jet for a commercial airline.
Combining business with pleasure, Trowe has flown to locales such as Louisville, Maine, Detroit, Connecticut, and New Jersey.
Surprised stares greet the investment banker as he emerges from a plane with his pilot headset in hand and strolls into an airport. "They look at [him] like they're not used to the man in the suit being the pilot," Poprik said.
Although Trowe is known for his sense of humor and his self-proclaimed ability to tell a joke on any subject, he takes his flying very seriously.
"Aviation is really a pretty safe thing, and every pilot over time finds himself in situations," Trowe said. "You're playing with Mother Nature and you'll have experiences that you'll get thrown into, but hopefully due to your experience, you'll be able to get out of them."
"I think it's safer than walking across the street in New York," Trowe said. On foot, "you could get mugged or something."
Despite his nearly 2,000 hours of flying time "most clients for some reason won't go flying" with him, Trowe said.
"Not that I haven't offered," he said. "They never turn you down. They say, ~Let's make a date to do that.' And that date never comes."
But one client, Jean DuBois, the treasurer of Gloucester County, N.J., has taken to the air with Trowe. Several years ago, DuBois and Gloucester County's freehold director, John Maier, took Trowe up on his offer to get a bird's-eye view of the county.
The flight went smoothly, DuBois recalled, but the landing aat the county's Cross Keys airport was a little complicated.
"Cross Keys is a very small airport and you have to come in and clear these high-tension wires and then you don't have much time to drop down" to the runway, the treasurer said.
On his first landing attempt, Trowe did not take into consideration the added weight of two passengers, she said. As a result, "we went down and bumped a few times and went back up. It was a very unusual situation. I do remember looking over at our freehold director and he was white. I'm sure Sam had a lump in his throat."
Clients aren't the only ones who avoid boarding an aircraft with Trowe at the controls.
David R. Wren, executive vice president of First American, remembers his own scary flight with Trowe.
This time Trowe flew with a hood over his head that let him see the instrument panel but nothing else. The single-engine, four-passenger plane was en route to Albany from Atlantic City with a flight instructor on board because Trowe was training for an instrument flying certification.
Trouble started. "What he couldn't see was a thunderstorn coming on the left side of the plane, and he didn't realize it until the plane dropped a few hundred feet," said Wren, who was seated in the back of the plane.
"The instructor knew what was goingg on nd he asked me to give him 'the book,' "Wren said. "I threw him up the owners manual and every book I cld find. What they wanted was the book; tht told them where the nearest airport was. Finally, I found it."
While he was looling, the plane "went up a few hundred feet and then came down a few hundred feet -- all in the space of about 20 seconds."
"I had to look to a higher authorit for faith at that point," Wren said. "The pilot could only do so much and I had been warned beforehandd that the one thing you wanted to do wasa to avoid flying in a thunderstorm. I had heard horror stories about wings being torn off the plane."
Looking back. Trowe areed that losig a wing "was definitely a possibility." He handled the situation y making a 180-degree turn in search of clera weather. Standard procedure calls for a pilot to have enough fuel to reach an alternative airport in case of an emergency.
"We bailed out in Bridgeport," Wren said, "As soon as we hit the ground, I bid them farewell, and hit the Avis counter. I was happy to be alive."
The Brooklyn-born investment bnker, who entered the Air Force at 17, received his first pilot's license in 1967. That one, classified as a private license, allowed him to fly only in clear weather.
"I scared myself and my familyy a couple of times," Trowe said. "Trul a license is nothing more than an ability to learn."
Air Force training in computers led to a job at Grumman Corp. on Long Island.
"The Air Force taught me computer systems, and in the eraly '60s that was king of a unique thing."
At Grumman, as a member of the ground-support engineering roup, he was responsible for writing technical specifications for the National Aernautics and Space Administration's lunar module program.
Trowe got his first job on Wall Street in the early 1970s, as a systems analyst at Leob Rhoades & Co., which later became Shearson Lehman Brothers. He worked at the firm until 1978.
Of his work at Loeb, Trowe said his new employers didn't realize that his area of computer expertise was not exactly wht they were looking for.
"They wanted me because of my computer skill," he said. The problem was that "they didn't know the difference between hardware and software. I was a hardwre expert and they wanted software expert."
On the other hand, "I didn't know what a bond was," he joked. "I just read everthing I possibly could and that's how I learned the business."
One thing he found out was how little his colleagues knew about technology. "Back then they were doing refundings by hand," he said, explaining thta in 1974 investment bankers would calculate the potential savings from a refuning deal with a pencil and paper, not a computer.
As a result, Trowe ventred into software. With Garland Wood, then an associate t Goldman Sachsss & Co., and a Long Island neighbor, Lloyd Bush, he designed one of the first refunding computer programs used on Wall Street.
After leaving Loeb, Trowe had a brief stint at Matthews & Wright -- "I came in and left before the black box deals" -- andd later joined Glickenhaus & co. to help launch the firm's public finance department. Trowe was executive director of that department until December 1988.
A shakeup at Glickenhaus brought on by losses from the 1987 stock market crash led Trowe, Poprik, whom he had hired at Matthews & Wright, and Wren to form First American.
Poprik owns a majorityy interest in the firm, so it is considered a "women business enterprise."
"That WBE status -- it was a door opener for us because we were going head to head with all of the major Wall Sttreet firms," Trowe sai> "I think that's what it was really meant to be."
"We did get some business because of that, but a lot of business is because of our expertise" in devising new financing techniques, Trowe said.
Last year, First American ranked 107 among senir managers of municipal offerings, as leada underwriter on 20 deals totaling $179.9 million.
And the firm is hoping to expand this year, possibly with a California office, Trowe said.
That might be advantageous, since Trowe seems to have an easier time attracting clients for the firm than getting them into a plane.
Even Wren has avoided flying with Trowe since their landing in Bridgeport.
"Twice since then, reluctantly," Wren said, adding "both tims in fair weather. And I checked the weather extensivelyy both times."
