John Westergaard

John Westergaard, 1931–2003, was a stock picker who built his career on the belief that small companies could richly reward investors who went looking for them. He spent a great majority of his career years looking for undiscovered small company stocks.

Mr. Westergaard also served as treasurer for Daniel Patrick Moynihan from the earliest days of his political career through four Senate campaigns. The two men met at the Samuel J. Tilden Democratic Club, and Mr. Westergaard agreed to serve as Moynihan's campaign treasurer when he ran for New York City Council president. Mr. Moynihan lost that race but the two men remained friends, and in 1976 Mr. Westergaard became treasurer of Mr. Moynihan's first successful Senate race.

John Westergaard began his Wall Street career as an analyst for Standard & Poor's, the securities rating service. In 1960 he opened a research firm with his friend, William Prime. Their company, Equity Research Associates, offered analytical services to small brokerage firms that could not afford research departments. This business was later acquired by Ladenburg, Thalmann & Company, a brokerage firm.

In the 1980s, Mr. Westergaard founded the Westergaard Fund, a mutual fund that aimed to carry out his ideas about finding emerging companies and investing shareholders' money in them. Unfortunately the firm was not as successful as he might have hoped, as stocks of small companies generally lagged the market during the bull market of the early and mid-1980s, then crashed harder than the rest of the market in October 1987. Mr. Westergaard closed the fund that November.

He continued to publish research via a mailed - and later faxed - newsletter available to subscribers. His descriptions of small companies were able to move stock prices and trading volume.

Mr. Westergaard eventuall moved his publishing to the Internet, starting a Web site devoted to small company stocks. He was the host of an investment radio show, "Johnny Dotcom's Journal," where he interviewed executives of startup companies, and offered a service to companies in which he tried to monitor electronic rumor mongers and to counteract the stories they spread.

Mr. Westergaard was born Johannes Westergaard, to immigrants from Norway, and was raised on Long Island. He became interested in Democratic Party politics while studying at Williams College in the early 1950s, and ran unsuccessfully for the New York State Senate. He attracted attention to one campaign issue, the dating of milk containers, by leading a cow through Wall Street.

Mr. Westergaard had four children: Cathrine and Kermit, owners of the Stinger bar in Brooklyn; Emile ; and Elizabeth, a musician in California.He died in 2003 of prostate cancer.

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