Graham And Doddsville

Irving Kahn, co-founder of Kahn Brothers Group and one-time teaching assistant to Benjamin Graham at Columbia Business School, has died at the age of 109.  I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Kahn in 2012.  I’ll never forget Mr. Kahn’s first words…. a profuse apology for not standing to greet me.  He had fallen on a step and hurt his back.  Irving Kahn, a successful investor who was 106 at the time and still worked in the office 3 – 4 days a week was apologizing for not giving me a proper greeting?!

We had a wonderful lunch.  If I am half as lucid at 80 as he was at 106, I will be a happy man.  More than once during our meeting Mr. Kahn urged me to read Storage and Stability by Benjamin Graham.  Embarrassingly, I never got around to it.  I think Mr. Kahn would happy to know that I just placed an order on Amazon and the book is next in my queue.  We may not all be blessed with as many years as Irving Kahn, but at least we have something and someone to aspire to.

See:  Irving Kahn, Investor Who Profited in ’29 Crash, Dies at 109 (Bloomberg)

See:  Irving Kahn, the world’s oldest investor, dies at 109 (The Telegraph)

See:  Irving Kahn, Wall Street’s oldest stockbroker, dies at 109 (The Washington Post)

See:  The oldest money manager on Wall Street has died at age 109 (Business Insider)

See:  Irving and Tom Kahn Guest Lecture (The Ben Graham Center for Value Investing)

See:  Interview of Irving Kahn (The Ben Graham Center for Value Investing)

See:  Storage and Stability: The Original 1937 Edition by Benjamin Graham with a Forward by Irving Kahn (Amazon)