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McDowell finds joy in family, faith, sports |
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By Rosemary McCoy
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Tuesday, 10 July 2007 |
The Question and Answer feature helps readers learn more about prominent people in the business community. This issue’s Q&A profiles Pierce H. McDowell III, co-founder and president of South Dakota Trust Co., which administers nearly $3 billion in assets for its clients.
 Pierce McDowell has a large collection of autographed sports memorabilia. (Inertia/for the SFBJ)
Name: Pierce H. McDowell III
Title: Co-founder and president of South Dakota Trust Co.
Background: Graduated from Washington High School in 1976, Arizona State University in 1980 and the University of South Dakota School of Law in 1983; started as an attorney with Woods, Fuller, Shultz & Smith; worked in the trust
division at Norwest Bank; hired by Citibank to start a trust company in South Dakota; started his own trust firm in 2002
Hometown: Sioux Falls
Age: 49
Family: Wife, Barbara; children: Ali, 17; Pierce “P-4”, 14; and Anika, 2
Q: Tell me about your interests.
A: “Learning about my faith has become more and more of an interest as I grow older. After all, what really matters more? My hobbies include biking, tennis, following my children’s sports interests and, apparently to satisfy some sadistic side of my persona, being a fan of the Twins.”
Q: How did you become interested in your field?
A: “I pursued law because I felt it would allow me flexibility in choosing what to do after all the schooling. The reality was I really did not know what I wanted to do after college – so I was effectively prolonging the inevitable. Today, my field or area of specialty is an aspect of the trust business. My grandfather, the original Pierce McDowell, was the first trust officer hired by Lester Sharpe of Security State Bank (the predecessor of what was Norwest Bank in Sioux Falls and is now Wells Fargo). As such, the professional direction was in my blood. He (P-1) was a well-respected businessman, and I figured to follow his path would be a good thing.”
Q: What do you enjoy most about work?
A: “I enjoy meeting good people from all over the world and boasting about what our state has to offer them. Our business is fortunate in that we tend to have high-quality folks as clients. Anyone working on their estate plan and going jurisdiction shopping tends to be ‘good people’ and often family-oriented. In other words, they are trying to think of ways to pass not only assets downstream to their prodigy in a tax-efficient fashion but values as well. We have two types of clients: the makers of the wealth and the inheritors. If they made the wealth, their story is always interesting. If the wealth was inherited, different challenges present themselves. At first blush, it is often difficult to feel sorry for a multimillionaire beneficiary. However, the reality is oftentimes these folks lack self-esteem because they have had nothing to do with their ‘lot in life.’ As such, helping these folks navigate that interesting plight can be very rewarding.”
Q: What does the swell of retiring baby boomers mean for the trust industry?
A: “SDTC’s business is really built on new wealth or very old money. As such, we are not necessarily after the retiree. The average net worth of our client is greater than $30 million.”
Q: What’s the status of South Dakota’s ranking in the nation for having a favorable legal environment for trusts? Are we still losing ground to other states?
A: “The state of South Dakota is not losing ground at all. In fact, in many ways we are very much the leader. Sad thing is we cannot rest on our laurels because states are constantly trying to equal or better us. My feeling is the trust business is based on service; as such if the playing field is equalized, we can always beat the enemy with good service. It’s our nature. Continuing to remain at the top is a good thing for our state. As it has been said, this is ‘clean industry.’ Furthermore, folks like our governor and the regulatory body that oversees the trust industry, the Division of Banking and its head Roger Novotny, are encouraging the families that choose South Dakota to invest in our state. I believe the ‘ask’ is the important element that has been missing in our delivery. I can guarantee we will not only see a continual creation of professional jobs emanate from this endeavor, but the state’s charitable and non-charitable endeavors benefit as the word spreads about the good place South Dakota is to do business.”
Q: What amount of assets does your firm administer in trusts?
A: “Due to the good service our administrators provide, combined with the tremendous efforts of our governor’s task force on trust law and the South Dakota Legislature, we have been able to grow our assets under administration from zero day one (April 2002) to just under $3 billion today!”
Q: What percentage of your clients are “out of state”?
A: “99.9 percent.”
Q: How do you find time to balance your job and your family?
A: “Presuming I’m balancing (in other words, you should ask my wife if I am), I am very fortunate that we live in the technology era we do. For example, this allows me to scoot home (via my bike as I hate to drive a car in Sioux Falls) during these summer months and chat on my BlackBerry phone or retrieve
e-mail missives while hitting tennis balls with my son in the midafternoon. Alternatively, with my laptop I can conduct work with my contacts in the Far East during their morning and our late evening after the children are tucked away at night.”
Q: What’s your favorite summertime activity?
A: “Biking to and fro work (as my tear ducts do not freeze up like they do when I bike in the wintertime) and playing with the kids! There was a moment there where I did not mind getting beat in things like tennis with my older kids – now I disdain that and them. (Personally, I think the losses are just a fluke.)”
Q: What’s your favorite getaway?
A: “My favorite getaway is to spend time playing a sport with my kids. About the only one I can still beat is the 2-year-old. Since my job involves getting clientele from afar, I tend to be on the road a lot. As such, spending time at our home on McKennan Park is the perfect idea of a vacation for me. Walking my 2-year-old over to Grammy’s house across the park several times daily is pretty special.”
Q: Do you have a charity or organization that’s especially close to your heart?
A: “My goal is to enhance my gifting to the schools my children attend, my church, St Mary’s, and the University of South Dakota. I also have goals that we are beginning to see come to fruition to have the families we serve from around the world utilize the foundations that many of them have to invest in South Dakota as this state continues to do good things for them. I see the South Dakota Community Foundation and the Sioux Falls Development Foundation as good vehicles for this type of effort.
Q: What kind of music is in your car or what do you listen to on the radio?
A: “I really like classic rock. However, if I happen to find myself in the car in the morning, I really enjoy Mike and Mike on ESPN Radio. Oh and the family loathes it when I must listen to the Twins games since my wife believes they are on 24/7!”
Q: If you could have dinner with two or three people - alive or dead – who would you choose and why?
A: “Jesus – possibly to garner a bit of a status report on how I am doing. (Hopefully I have time to make up!) I would request that He allow my dad to be there with us – as I miss my dad very much.”
Q: What are the best and worst things about living in Sioux Falls?
A: “The best: The spirit to make it a better place. The worst: the bizarre polar opposite trait of not seeing the benefit of supporting publicly some of the sporting venues for our children this city sorely does not have or inadequately has. Dividends would be paid on investment of this nature.”
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