SID BASS

Sid Richardson Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1942, the oldest of Perry Bass's four sons. He went to Yale and then Stanford for an MBA.

When he came home, the family had oil money but no real investing engine. In 1970 Sid hired Richard Rainwater, a friend from Stanford who became a legendary dealmaker.

Together they turned Bass Brothers Enterprises into a machine. They bought stakes in companies, played the market, and made a string of huge scores through the 1970s and 1980s.

The biggest was Disney. That single bet, more than anything, is what pushed the Bass fortune from oil-rich to seriously rich.

Bass Brothers Enterprises was the family's main investment vehicle, and Sid ran it with Richard Rainwater. Through it the family took big positions in public companies.

The crown jewel was The Walt Disney Company. In the 1980s the Bass family became Disney's largest shareholder and helped install Michael Eisner and Frank Wells to run it.

Sid also invests through the BBT Fund, a private fund based in Fort Worth that reports its stock holdings to the SEC. Over the years the family money touched oil, real estate, and a long list of stocks.

But Disney is the holding everyone remembers, because it made the most money and lasted the longest.

Sid Bass is a patient, concentrated bettor who backs people as much as businesses. His whole career runs on one idea.

Find a great manager, take a big stake, and let them work. That is exactly what he did with Disney, buying in and then betting on Michael Eisner to fix the company.

He is not a trader flipping positions. He holds for years and lets good management build the value.

The other half of his edge was Richard Rainwater, the dealmaker he hired to hunt for opportunities. Sid brought the capital and the conviction.

Rainwater brought the ideas.

The Disney trade is one of the great investments of the 20th century, and Sid Bass was at the center of it. In the mid-1980s the Bass family became the largest shareholder in The Walt Disney Company.

Sid and Richard Rainwater backed new leadership, Michael Eisner and Frank Wells, who pulled Disney out of a slump and into a golden era of hit movies and booming theme parks. The stock exploded.

The family's stake grew into billions of dollars over the following years. It was the bet that turned oil money into a diversified fortune and made Sid the most successful investor of the four brothers.

The mistake was leverage, and the bill came due in 2001. Sid had borrowed heavily against his massive Disney holding.

When the stock market fell sharply after the September 11 attacks, his lenders issued a margin call. To cover it, he was forced to sell roughly 135 million Disney shares worth about $2 billion, dumping them into a falling market at the worst possible moment.

The forced sale reportedly rattled Disney's stock and cost him a fortune in a fire sale. The lesson is old but permanent.

Even a brilliant long-term bet can blow up if you borrow against it and the timing goes wrong.

Sid Bass believes in conviction. Do the homework, find the right people, take a big position, and then be patient.

He is not interested in owning a little bit of everything. He wants to own a lot of a few things he truly believes in, like Disney.

He also believes in handing the work to talent, which is why hiring Richard Rainwater was the smartest move he ever made. If there is a hard-won rule buried in his story, it is about the danger of debt.

Conviction plus patience built the fortune. Borrowing against it nearly cost him a big chunk of it in 2001.

Sid is the eldest of the four Bass brothers, alongside Ed, Robert, and Lee. His father was oilman Perry Bass and his great-uncle was the wildcatter Sid Richardson, who he is named after.

His first marriage to Anne Bass, a noted art collector and ballet patron, ended in a headline-grabbing 1988 divorce. He then married Mercedes Bass, and together they became fixtures of the New York cultural scene, especially at the Metropolitan Opera.

He guards his private life closely, splitting time between Fort Worth and New York.

Sid Bass went to Yale for his undergraduate degree and then earned an MBA from Stanford. Stanford turned out to be the most important stop.

It is where he got to know the world that produced Richard Rainwater, the dealmaker he would later hire to build the family fortune. The MBA gave him the tools.

The bigger payoff was the network and the nerve to make huge, concentrated bets.

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