Nathan Fisher has taken to LinkedIn to defend his father, Ken Fisher, for what many view as crude and sexist remarks he made last week at the Tiburon CEO Summit.
“My father, Ken Fisher, made comments in a recent talk that some have interpreted as sexist, racist or bigoted. Anyone who knows him personally will agree that he is not even close to any of these things. He is a good person and has apologized for his comments,” Fisher said.
Nathan Fisher, according to his LinkedIn page, is senior executive vice president of 401(k) Solutions at Fisher Investments. He has been with the firm for 13 years and began his current role in September 2017.
“It saddens me to see him attacked and labeled in these ways. My father's brain is wired differently from most people's, and that is part of why he's been successful at what he does,” Fisher said. “However, this also means he relates to people differently and doesn't always interpret social cues in conventional ways. As he has tried to understand how people felt about his comments, I hope others can try to understand that he didn't mean any harm and has learned from what happened,” he added.
At the Tiburon event last week, Fisher spoke about how he built his company, which manages $112 billion. He compared the process of gaining a client’s trust to “trying to get into a girl’s pants” and talked about genitalia and dropping acid.
Initially, Fisher told Bloomberg that he has given “a lot of talks, a lot of times, in a lot of places and said stuff like this and never gotten that type of response.” He said he thought his comments were taken out of context. “Mostly the audience understands what I am saying.”
Fisher has since apologized for the comments.
But the fallout has been costly. There has been an exodus of investors.
The State of Michigan Retirement System pension account ended its relationship with Fisher’s firm, which managed $600 million for the state. The Philadelphia Board of Pensions also divested $54 million in assets from Fisher.
In addition, the city of Boston has pulled $248 million in government pensions from Fisher Investments.