Hawaii native Daniel H. Case Jr., former chairman of Hambrecht & Quist Group, which underwrote the initial public offerings of such technology companies as Apple Computer Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., died yesterday of brain cancer. He was 44. DANIEL H. CASE JR. /
INVESTMENT BANKERIsle-born businessman
dies of cancer at 44By Leila Fujimori
lfujimori@starbulletin.comCase, the brother of AOL Time Warner Inc. Chairman Stephen Case, battled the cancer for more than a year.
He died early yesterday morning, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. spokeswoman Nancy Israel said.
"It's hard to accept that a person that good and decent and that talented is taken from all of us so early," said his cousin, gubernatorial candidate state Rep. Ed Case.
He said his cousin's family flew to San Francisco to be with him in his final days spent at home.
Although Daniel Case grew up in Honolulu, while Ed grew up on the Big Island, the two were very close and drew closer in early adulthood when Ed worked for U.S. Sen. Spark Matsunaga and Daniel interned in the U.S. Senate.
"Nobody who knew Danny doubted he would succeed," he said. "It was a question of where and how."
"He was a major figure in my life, besides my family, my best friend," he said.
"Everybody sought out Danny's advice," including himself, and younger brother Steve on "whether to leave a career track with an established company or take a flyer on this company that wasn't known then as America Online but grew into America Online," Ed Case said.
The second-biggest U.S. bank bought Hambrecht & Quist in 1999. Silicon Valley bankers credit Case with being one of the driving forces behind the financing of technology companies throughout the 1990s.
"He was a great force in supplying the capital for the whole growth of technology," said Sandy Robertson, who as former chairman of Robertson Stephens Inc. competed against Case and Hambrecht & Quist. "He brought a style and grace to the investment banking business, and a competitive spirit in the right way."
Case joined Hambrecht & Quist in 1979 after the firm's co-founder William Hambrecht asked faculty at Princeton University to recommend the school's "smartest student" for a summer internship, according to a J.P. Morgan statement.
A Rhodes Scholar with a bachelor's degree in economics, Case worked his way through the firm's corporate finance, venture capital and mergers and acquisitions departments before becoming co-chief executive in 1992 and sole chief executive in 1994. He was named chairman in 1998.
Case was a 1975 Punahou Schools graduate, named presidential scholar in his senior year.
He is survived by his wife, Stacey Black Case, and his four children, Alexander, Winston, John Daniel and Charlotte.
He also is survived by father Daniel H. Case, senior partner of the Honolulu law firm of Case Bigelow & Lombardi; mother Carol Holmes Case; sister Carin Case Shippey; and brother Jeffrey Holmes Case.
Services will be held next month in San Francisco.
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.