In Minerd’s last few years, he favored gingham shirts and purple ties. Often his complexion was pallid, eyelids slightly drooping and rapidly blinking, his slightly oversized lower lip giving him the appearance of a pouty man-boy. At one point he embraced a new look, sporting Moschino-style tortoiseshell glasses and a ginger dye job. “Who is that, Elton John?” cracked a colleague watching Minerd on CNBC. But just a few months before his death, he appeared to gain weight, looking more obese than muscular. His gravelly, halting voice made him sound like a man whose tie was too tight. He sometimes appeared unhealthy, and he was. Minerd suffered from scoliosis, heart disease, high cholesterol, and a red blood cell disorder requiring regular treatment, according to friends, his death certificate, and court filings.
There was a consolation prize for Minerd’s “stepchild” status at Guggenheim: the rise of Scott Minerd, Wall Street influencer. Boehly, Schwartz, and Walter believed in staying off the media radar screen, prompting reporters to call Guggenheim “mysterious.” When one member of top leadership granted a rare in-depth interview, a leading public relations guru was flown in to coach the executive for a five-figure fee. Minerd was a cost-effective talking head, requiring no media coaching and relatively little prep. He could answer a question about European monetary policy in plain English. “Never in the history of the world have we had a series of central banks…essentially propping up global economies by printing money,” he told Consuelo Mack on WealthTrack. He was a Republican but a centrist. “Scott was politically commonsensical,” said Luntz. “He was focused on results and solutions.” Two years before he died, in a chat with editorial staffers at the Los Angeles Times, Minerd backed Medicare for All and said “the Green New Deal is actually not such a bad idea.”
Minerd became the face of Guggenheim, a role he jealously guarded. Media interviews were his emotional counterprogramming. They seemed to make him feel better, like a good therapy session. When he was on set, spouting his opinions about 10-year Treasury yields, he felt acceptance and affirmation. Conversations with TV anchors revolved around his opinions, his predictions. He once received a call from Sylvester Stallone seeking life insurance advice during an on-air interview, dazzling his host, Bloomberg News’s John Gittelsohn.
One problem: The hot take culture of business media isn’t a great match for a think-slow investment approach. He flip-flopped on Bitcoin, stating it should be worth $400,000, then that it could fall to $15,000, causing a hellish backlash from crypto fans. A year before his death, he predicted there could be a recession two to three years out (nope). He insisted gold would reach $5,000 per ounce (it has yet to clear $3,000).
Growing up, Minerd spent a lot of time in church. A solo vocalist in the choir, he read from Scripture at Good Friday services. He was raised in Chalk Hill, Pennsylvania, a tiny mountain community (population 71). His interest in bodybuilding was furthered by a summer job laying railroad tracks. It helped transform him from a skinny teen to a muscle-bound youth. Kendall Minerd, his father, was an insurance agent and worked for a railroad. His mother, Carol, was a rock-ribbed Presbyterian and, according to friends, a devout alcoholic. She imbued in him a sense of fear and respect for his faith. But as he got older and tried to come to terms with his sexuality, he received no understanding, much less acceptance, from his mother, said a friend. There weren’t many gay cultural icons in the 1970s and ’80s, certainly not in the Rust Belt. Growing up gay in Pennsylvania coal country would have put crushing weight on his self-image.
Graduating from Wharton in 1980, Minerd became an accountant at a Big Four firm. Soon, however, he changed career course, going to work in capital markets at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. The wild number of variables affecting fixed-income investing—credit quality, fiscal policies, currency movements—fascinated him. Soon he was executing complicated trades around Swedish bonds, then a deal involving debt restructuring for Italy. From there he went to Credit Suisse First Boston, running the fixed-income desk. Some 15 years after he’d started, he had made enough to retire, or so he thought. At age 37 he moved to a waterfront home in LA’s Venice to devote time to bodybuilding.
Gold’s Gym, the powerlifting center of the universe, became his second home. There he met Figueroa, a personal trainer who became his best friend. Figueroa was a minor celebrity with a major following in the bodybuilding world. He says he treated Minerd’s scoliosis with physical therapy three times a week and oversaw the design of his home gym. Minerd competed in LA bodybuilding championships, once ranking eighth in the super heavyweight division. At his peak he could bench-press 495 pounds for 20 straight repetitions. He and Figueroa ate often at the Firehouse on Rose Avenue, a former fire station converted to a restaurant catering to the Muscle Beach crowd. Among Minerd’s favorite orders: the hefty Bob Bowl, from the Bodybuilder’s Menu, loaded with Angus steak, peppers, and rice. In a 2012 interview, he recalled bumping into fellow bodybuilder and former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. “He’s smaller than me now,” Minerd marveled.
In 1998, Walter, a former client, made Minerd an offer to join a company he was forming. The new firm united three entities—Walter’s Chicago commercial paper company, a broker-dealer in New York, and some real estate assets owned by the Guggenheim family—under a single brand, Guggenheim Partners. Minerd said he’d join if he could stay in California.
The firm grew and so did his visibility. In Minerd’s early years at Guggenheim, Bloomberg Television rolled out a number of new shows; Fox Business launched, as did CNBC’s Closing Bell. They were new platforms hungry for talent. As he gained visibility and wealth, the public Minerd assumed the trappings of an aristocrat. He bought homes with vineyards, stables, and golf courses but had no interest in wine or horses and didn’t play golf.
Early in his Wall Street career, Minerd felt his peers “would not accept him” as a gay man, said Figueroa. Over time, Minerd also struggled to reconcile his devout upbringing. He was known to pray in the morning and at night. Once he spent hours flipping through the pages of a Bible, looking for references to homosexuality to understand God’s will on the matter, said a friend.
