Jack Nash (businessman)

Jack Nash (April 10, 1929 – July 30, 2008) was a German-born American businessman and investor. He served as president of Oppenheimer & Company and foundedThe New York Sun newspaper.

Born Jack Nachtgeist in Berlin on April 10, 1929, to a Jewish family that fled Nazi Germany before World War II. He attended Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, New York, and graduated from City College of New York in 1953.

Nash joined Oppenheimer & Company in 1951 and became its president in 1974. He was elected chairman in 1979. In 1982, he and business partner Leon Levy sold the company for $163 million, investing $50 million to start the hedge fund, Odyssey Partners. Nash was also a founder of The New York Sun and served as vice chairman of the board of the American Stock Exchange in the late 1970s.

Nash married Helen Englander in 1957, sister of billionaire investor Israel Englander. He and his wife donated millions to Jewish and other cultural and social charities. Although not Orthodox himself, Nash served as chairman of the Aleph Society, dedicated to promoting the works of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. Helen Nash has authored a line of kosher cookery books. They had two children, Joshua and Pamela, and six grandchildren.

Nash died on July 30, 2008, after a long illness, at Mount Sinai Medical Center.

In 2008, he was inducted into Institutional Investors Alpha's Hedge Fund Manager Hall of Fame along with David Swensen, Louis Bacon, Steven Cohen, Kenneth Griffin, Paul Tudor Jones, George Soros, Michael Steinhardt, Seth Klarman, James Simmons, Alfred Jones, Leon Levy, Julian Roberston, and Bruce Kovner.