The Big Board's Stand-Up President

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT called the presidency of the New York Stock Exchange "the second toughest job in the world." The present big man at the Big Board takes a similarly large view: "My job is to move these people into the 21st century." Yet neither the personas nor the performance of Robert William Haack seemed grandiose--until last week. Quiet spoken, looking younger than his 53 years, sometimes awed by the satraps of the Street, Haack had come across as more the manager and conciliator than the innovative leader. Unlike his predecessor, G. Keith Funston, who served the exchange as a supersalesman, Haack seemed like central casting's response to a call for a small-town doctor.

There have been plenty of ills to care for since Haack took over in 1967. He had to contend first with a runaway bull market and then a severe slowdown in the securities industry. There were times, he says, when "I slept very well between 2:15 a.m. and 2:30 a.m." In many of the mergers on Wall Street over the past twelve months, Haack has been the man holding the shotgun.

Haack has the considerable advantage of knowing the business thoroughly, having spent all his working life in the securities field. Born in Milwaukee, Wis., the son of an insurance agent, he graduated from Hope College in Holland, Mich., in 1940. He went on to Harvard Business School on a scholarship, earning an M.B.A., and joined Milwaukee's Wisconsin Co., which later became Robert W. Baird & Co. As a securities analyst there, he earned $125 a month (his present salary: $125,000 a year). After a wartime stint in the Navy, he returned to the same company and was made a partner in 1950. At the time, he had only $1,000 cash and had to sign a note for the other $9,000 in capital that was required of a new partner. By 1964 Haack was the unpaid chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers, a job he held only four months before he was tapped as the association's first full-time president. He moved to Washington, where his wife and four children still live; Haack now commutes home from New York on weekends.

One of the first and most frequent criticisms that Haack had to face as president of the Big Board was that, although he was a good public speaker and golfer, he lacked punch in his job. Associates wondered when the real Robert Haack would stand up. Now he has. Instead of making his speech as he usually does, without text or even notes, he says: "I wrote this speech myself, nine drafts of it. This wasn't a product of the public relations department. It was pure Haack. I knew it would offend some members, but I felt strongly." Haack admits that "it could lead to my being fired," but the opposite may be just as true. By speaking out publicly, Haack made his opponents within the exchange appear to be standing in the way of progress. He has also propelled himself into a position of real leadership that he has never had until now.

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