Carl Tiedemann II, Investment Banker
Carl Hans Tiedemann II, an East Hampton resident whose long career in investment banking included founding a firm that helped finance successful hedge funds and a trust company that became a model for the industry, died at his New York City home on April 30 of an apparent heart attack. He was 89 years old.
Mr. Tiedemann began his career as a salesman for American Cyanamid, but soon found work on Wall Street, first with Stone and Webster, a small brokerage firm, and then, in 1962, with Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette. He became its president in 1975. During his years at the firm, Mr. Tiedemann was on the board of numerous corporations, such as Winrock International, a Winthrop Rockefeller foundation, the Alltel Corporation, and Dillon Read and Company. He was on the board of governors of the American Stock Exchange from 1969 to 1972 and a trustee of the Allen-Stevenson School.
Leaving the firm in 1980, he started the Tiedemann Investment Group, now, after 36 years, one of the longest- standing firms in the hedge fund industry, and the Tiedemann Trust Company, now known as Tiedemann Wealth Management, which pioneered an “open architecture” standard.
He was born on June 3, 1926, in Cleveland, the son of Carl Hans Tiedemann and May Glenn. His father died when he was 3, in the midst of the Great Depression, and his mother moved her son and his sister to Plainfield, N.J., where she had family. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and served in the Navy during World War II. At the end of the war, he enrolled at Trinity College, from which he graduated in 1959. He had been the founder of the lacrosse program at Trinity and, years later, was inducted into its Lacrosse Hall of Fame
As a leader, Carl was remarkably positive and optimistic. In the face of the greatest challenges he would find a silver lining,” one of his sons, Michael Tiedemann, who is now chief executive officer of Tiedemann Wealth Management, said on the company’s website.
Mr. Tiedemann and Mary Cumming were married in 1959 and came to East Hampton with their four children in the early 1960s. They were divorced in 1995, and she died in 2012. Mr. Tiedemann and Kari Jonassen, who survives, were married in 2006. Their East Hampton home was at Chancey Close.
In East Hampton, Mr. Tiedemann was a member of the Maidstone Club. He also was a member of the University Club, the Link Club, the River Club of New York, the Anglers Club, the Economic Club of New York, and the Long Island Wyandanch Club, among others.
In addition to his wife and his son Michael, three more of his children survive. They are Hans Tiedemann of Santa Monica, Calif., Mark Tiedemann of Los Angeles, and Leigh Tiedemann of Lexington, Mass. Eleven grandchildren also survive.
A memorial service will be held on May 24 at 10:45 a.m. at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, 325 Park Avenue, New York City. Donations in his memory have been suggested to the Tiedemann Family Scholarship Fund at the Middlesex School, 1400 Lowell Road, Concord, Mass. 01742.
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Correction: An earlier version of this obituary that appeared in print and online gave the incorrect date of death for Mary Cumming. She died in 2012, not 2002.