Pioneering fund manager Gerald Tsai is dead

Gerald Tsai Jr., a former fund manager and financier who started Fidelity Investments’ first aggressive growth fund, has died at the age of 79, according to published reports.
Mr. Tsai was born in Shanghai, China in 1929 and moved to the United States in 1947, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from Boston University.
In 1951, he became a securities analyst at Bache & Co. of New York before joining the Fidelity Management and Research Co., now Fidelity Investments of Boston, in 1952 as a $90-a-week securities analyst. In 1959, he started the company’s first aggressive growth fund, which grew from $12.3 million that year to $340 million in 1965.
He parlayed his success into the launch of the Manhattan Fund, which brought in $247 million in capital, which at the time was the biggest offering in investment company history.
Mr. Tsai sold the fund in 1968 to the CNA Financial Corp. of Chicago, walking away with $30 million.
He later became the chief executive of Primerica Financial Services Inc. of Duluth, Ga., making him the first Chinese-American to head a company that is listed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.