Sweat Stocks

Investment bankers are seldom hired for their ability to spike a volleyball, run a marathon or slam-dunk a basketball. But anyone applying for a job at San Francisco's Montgomery Securities might be well advised to show up in a track suit. Reason: Thomas Weisel, the company's senior partner, likes athletes on his team. He firmly believes they have an edge when it comes to crunching numbers and corporate rivals. His 300 employees, many of whom are devoted joggers, also include former top competitors in skiing, tennis, basketball and volleyball. Weisel's draft choices have proved to be a smashing success. Montgomery, after 14 years in operation, has leaped into the ranks of the top 20 U.S. investment companies and now conducts more business than any other stock firm outside Wall Street.

The boss's locker-room mentality, though, is not the only reason for Montgomery's success. During the past four years, Weisel has raided Wall Street for top talent, sometimes regardless of athletic ability, by luring prospects with the opportunity to own stock in his brokerage by the bay. One important catch was Alan Stein, a Goldman Sachs veteran who transformed Montgomery's investment-banking division into a big-time operation that expects to underwrite almost $1.5 billion in securities this year, up 200% from 1984.

In order to battle New York City's giants, Montgomery's sales staff is aggressive enough to make John McEnroe cringe. That spirit comes largely from Weisel, 44, a ski and bicycle racer who encourages his workers to make time for competitive sports no matter how busy they get. Says he: "They ought to have some other area in their life they're interested in, to counterbalance the intense nature of our business." Weisel has built no in-house facilities but sponsors corporate skiing and running teams.

Weisel, a Milwaukee native whose father played professional hockey while studying to be a surgeon, won several national speed-skating titles as a teenager. After studying economics at Stanford and earning his Harvard M.B.A., he helped form one San Francisco brokerage firm in 1967 and quit four years later to start the forerunner of Montgomery with three colleagues. By 1979 the tenacious Weisel had taken command of the firm.

Weisel still had time to take third place in his age group in the 1982 national championship for slalom, giant slalom and downhill. But he wants to win that title too, so he often takes Fridays off and flies in his Cheyenne IIXL turboprop to Sun Valley, Idaho, for practice. To get in shape for bicycle races, he pedals his trail bike up 2,600-ft. Mount Tamalpais, near his home. Weisel has boasted that his occasional riding partners are left with "their tongues hanging out." That goes likewise for his business rivals.