Stephen Hassenfelt: Understated leader

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“I thought, ‘Ugh,’” Hassenfelt says. “So much for staying out of the It’s not always possible to stay behindthe scenes, especially for somebody who’s been involvedx in some of Greensboro’s biggest corporate and civic venturexs during the past three The shyness he professes Hassenfelt is well known whether he likes it or not. Now concludin g his term as chairmanof UNCG’s boarfd of trustees, Hassenfelt founded two successful financialo management firms in the city and helped engineer the mergetr of its two major hospital systems in the “I was a little surprised he was willing to do an interview with for this profile, says Sue his long-time business partnef and principal of Granville Capital, which Hassenfeltg founded in 2003.
“He asked me whethedr he shoulddo it, and I told him I though he should, because people need to hear about his kind of His is the kind of leadership that is understateed but effective, say those who have worked with Hassenfelt througb the years. He tends to claim no publif credit perhaps because his successfukl ventures often speakfor themselves. Chief among at least in terms of pure is N.C. Trust Co., the wealth management firm he co-foundee in 1984 and led through growth to 85 employees in downtown Greensboroand $2.5 billion in assetss at the time of its sale to in 1999.
Wealthj management was a career shiftgfor Hassenfelt, who had earlier workecd as an accountant and earned a law degreer from Wake Forest in 1976. He founded his own boutique law firm with partnet Paul Livingston in Greensboroin 1981. That practic focused on tax law, the area he found most but clients wanted a broader scopeof service. Rather than simpl y branch out the law Hassenfelt split off on his own tocreatw N.C. Trust. A trust made the most sense as abusineszs structure, he says, becauss as a fiduciary obligate d to act in his clients’ best interests, he would be able to managre a bigger portion of their financiakl lives and, hopefully, keep them out of trouble.
“Whehn I practiced law, people generally came to me when they had a Hassenfelt says. “In a trust, I coulds work with them on ways to avoid The more comprehensive approach appealedto Hassenfelt’sw strategic nature, and that nature helpes explain the success and growth of N.C. Trust, says who joined that company in 1987 and eventuallybecame U.S. Trust’ss regional chief executive. “He studied so and he’d talk to people all across the country and go to conferences and do whateve rit took” to find edges for his Cole says. For example, N.C.
Trust was one of the firsyt financial management firms in the region to make sure everyt employee was usingthose new-fanglee desktop computers and e-mail. By the late 1990s, N.C. Trust had outgrown any claim to being a boutique firm, but it was still too small to take on its nationalk competitors. One of those competitors, , tried to take over N.C. Trusf in 1998, Hassenfelt says, but even after that deal he knew some kind of mergerwas inevitable. The deal with U.S. Trustr to create the U.S.
Trust Company of Nortu Carolina with Hassenfelt as CEO preservedhis company’s local statuws and even added some jobs as the resources of the larger firm created new services for But he was he admits, when just months latef U.S. Trust turned around and mergedwith . Hassenfely was tapped to help the top executivesw at Schwaband U.S. Trustr meld their organizations together. He worker hard at it but could see it woulde be atroubled union, a view many industry observers woulc come to share. “There were greaf people on both sides, but they were totallg different” in their styles and Hassenfelt says. Where U.S.
Trust was used to holding the hand s of verywealthy people, Schwah was known as an online discounty broker that catered to do-it-yourselfv investors. If he’d known the Schwahb merger was coming, Hassenfelt he wouldn’t have done the U.S. Trust But that doesn’t mean he thinks difficultr deals aren’t worth doing, as is evidencedc by the merger of and that Hassenfelty helped make happen in 1997 after more than a year of planninygand negotiation.
Hassenfelt chaired Wesley Long’s board at the which meant he knew as well as anyone the difficultiea that lay ahead of that organization with its smaller patient capacity and fewer specialized services ina head-to-headf competition with the larger Moses Cone.