BID Sothebys

John M. Angelo, who co-founded Angelo, Gordon & Co. and ran the New York investment firm for nearly three decades, died Friday after suffering from cancer. He was 74 years old.

Mr. Angelo was widely known on Wall Street and in New York society. He was on the board at auction house Sotheby's, a longtime friend of former Walt Disney Co. chief Michael Eisner and a neighbor to many of Manhattan's richest and most famous at the Dakota apartment building.

He also was husband of Judy Hart Angelo, an award-winning songstress who co-wrote the theme to "Cheers" and other well-known television shows.

Yet his eponymous firm has kept a relatively low profile even though it manages $26 billion for clients and has 400-some employees stationed throughout the world.

A former arbitrage trader, Mr. Angelo founded the firm in 1988 with Michael Gordon, writing up a business plan that called for a $75 million first fund. Mr. Gordon oversaw investing, while Mr. Angelo was chief executive and handled relationships with investors.

Angelo Gordon went on to become a major player in distressed-debt and real-estate investing, while also running a private-equity business that has acquired midsize companies ranging from the Japanese-food restaurant chain Benihana to niche lenders.

"We wanted to have the highest ethical standards, attract the most talented investment professionals and to help our clients be as successful as possible," Mr. Gordon wrote in a note to employees announcing his partner's death. "We had no idea how successful we would be, and our clients would be, by adhering to those simple objectives."

The two men had decamped from L.F. Rothschild Holdings Inc., a merchant-banking operation that became a top underwriter of initial public offerings in the 1980s but was felled in the 1987 stock-market crash.

Mr. Angelo found his way to leadership roles at L.F. Rothschild—and later at his own firm—through what he characterized in a 2015 commencement speech at his alma mater St. Lawrence University as a series of breaks.

They included a career-launching assignment on the bond floor of the New York Stock Exchange in 1967 and his eventual recruitment to the arbitrage desk at Bear Stearns.

In recent years, Mr. Angelo sought to line up lucky breaks for St. Lawrence graduates, creating a program to get finance students Wall Street internships after he learned that many from the upstate school had never been to New York City, his hometown.

He is survived by his wife and three children, Jack, a television producer; Kate, a screenwriter; and Jesse, who is chief executive and publisher of the New York Post, which, like The Wall Street Journal, is owned by News Corp.

Write to Ryan Dezember at ryan.dezember@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 04, 2016 01:15 ET (06:15 GMT)

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