The acquisition also boosted UBS’s U.S. client assets to 49% of its total from 4%, making it the world’s biggest wealth manager. In return, Paine Webber’s clients would have greater access to European securities and research.
“This is the right merger, with the right partner, at the right time,” Marron, who also served as Paine Webber’s chairman, said at the time of the deal.
Early Life
Donald Baird Marron was born July 21, 1934, in Goshen, New York. His father, Edward Joseph Marron, was a professional writer, according to the 1977 New York Times article.
Raised in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood, he graduated from the Bronx High School of Science at age 13. In 1951, he dropped out of the City University of New York’s Baruch College to join the New York Trust Co.’s research department.
”He was bright enough to skip grades,” Catie Marron said. “He started working at 17 to support his family.”
Marron started D.B. Marron & Co. in 1959. He sold Data Resources, co-founded in 1969 with Harvard University economist Otto Eckstein, to McGraw-Hill for $103 million in 1979.
He served as chairman of UBS America from 2000 to 2003. He was also chairman of Lightyear Capital, the New York-based private equity firm he founded in 2000, and which has raised $3.5 billion in capital, according to its website.
Art Lover
Standing 6 feet 6 inches tall, Marron had a high profile in many ways. He was on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange from 1974 to 1981; a co-chairman of the National Commission on Retirement Policy, the non-partisan group that was tasked with finding ways to keep Social Security solvent; and, at the start of the George W. Bush administration, was mentioned as a candidate for Treasury secretary.
He was also a trustee of New York University, giving $40 million in 2013 to start the Marron Institute on Cities and the Urban Environment; a trustee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and a member of the board of overseers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
An avid art collector, Marron built up a large corporate collection of mainly American modern works, first at Mitchell Hutchins and then at Paine Webber. Canvases by Claes Oldenburg, Chuck Close and Andy Warhol festooned the walls at Paine Webber’s headquarters in midtown Manhattan.