Alberto Vilar: 1940—: Investor, Philanthropist

Vilar was born in Newark, New Jersey, on October 4, 1940. He spent his early childhood in Cuba, and, from age nine, grew up in Puerto Rico, his mother's home. From an early date he fell in love with the violin; later he added orchestral and liturgical music by Bach, Mendelssohn, Puccini, and Verdi. His grandmother, who studied at Havana Conservatory, took him to see Mario Lanza's movies. Vilar's immersion in melody annoyed his father, a sugar magnate who disliked his son's gravitation to swimming, music, and altar service.

The elder Vilar even referred to his son as a "long hair" or a geek, in today's slang. Instead, he wanted Alberto to pursue the practical goals of math, science, and banking. To Vilar's dismay, his father rejected the purchase of a violin and lessons. Vilar continued secretly learning classical melodies.

After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the elder Vilar lost his business and the family fled to Puerto Rico. Alberto enrolled at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania, to which he later donated $5 million to establish the Vilar Center for Technology. After he graduated in 1962 he enlisted in the U.S. Army. During his service overseas he haunted German concert halls and other performance venues.

In 1964 Vilar obeyed his father by launching a career in finance at Citicorp and Burnham & Company and concentrated on underappreciated stocks related to telecommunications. Within months, he resettled in London, where he had no difficulty finding musical excellence. To Norman Lubrecht of Culturkiosque, Vilar confided, "London in the late 1960s and '70s had some of the best music. So I have been coming to Covent Garden all my life."

By 1980 Vilar and partner Gary Tanaka opened their business, co-managed by Emeric McDonald, the director of research. Vilar chose the corporation's name from his first clients, a consortium of Indonesian Chinese, by compressing the proposed American Indonesian Singaporean Investment Company into Amer-indo. While managing the New York City Retirement System, the Nature Conservancy, and San Antonio City Public Service, Amerindo bankrolled startup Internet firms, a risk that more conservative money marketers doubted. Vilar's name soon connected with emerging leaders—Amazon.com, America Online, Ariba, Cisco, Commerce One, eBay, i2, Microsoft, Oracle, and Yahoo. The first to back biotechnology with Genentech, Amgen, and Chiron, he made his reputation with his shrewd stock picks. His interest in stock newcomers led to the creation of the Amerindo Technology Fund in 1996, and in 2000, to the establishment of the Health & Biotechnology Fund and the Internet B2B Fund. Business Week cited his vision of coming advances: "We think the Internet will be the largest business and investment opportunity in history—larger than the Industrial Revolution.… What we see in five years will make the present seem like a quaint anachronism."

When Vilar acquired both leisure and money for travel, he made long opera excursions to world-class culture centers in London, St. Petersburg, Milan, Vienna, and San Francisco, where he opened a branch of Amer-indo. Enamored of grand opera Russian style, after the breakup of his marriage in 1987, he embraced the arts. At the Met, he underwrote performances of La Cenerentola, Cosi Fan Tutte, Fidelio, Le Nozze di Figaro, and La Traviata and co-produced Dr. Faustus and War and Peace. For a long period, he concealed his lavish donations. In 1995 he abandoned closet philanthropy and hired eight charity managers. Because of shrinking public investment in training centers and music halls and in subsidized art education, he aggressively supported music. Columnist Norman Lubrecht in Culturkiosque called Vilar, "buck for buck, the biggest benefactor in musical history."