Wheelock Whitney Jr., who founded the Minneapolis-based private equity firm now called Norwest Equity Partners, died Friday. He was 89.
Whitney was in hospice care at home, his son told the Star Tribune. He was formerly president and part-owner of the Minnesota Vikings and helped land the Minnesota Twins baseball club and the former Minnesota North Stars.
"Whitney was an outstanding and influential civic leader throughout his life," Gov. Mark Dayton said in a prepared statement Friday, calling him "a very dear family friend."
In 1961 he partnered with Northwest Bancorporation President Goodrich Lowery to launch Northwest Growth Fund with $2.5 million in capital. The firm's first investments were in publishing company EMC Corp. and International Dairy Queen.
Northwest Bancorporation is now San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co; Northwest Growth Fund is now Norwest Equity Partners and Norwest Mezzanine Partners.
Whitney became CEO of J.M. Dain & Co. in 1963. The investment firm was later known as Dain Rauscher and acquired by Royal Bank of Canada in 2000.
"He was a friend and a mentor and I consider myself to be incredibly fortunate to have known him, said John Taft, who now has Whitney's job as CEO of RBC Wealth Management U.S. "He was truly a larger than life personality. He had a big gregarious personality, he loved telling stories ... [he was] generous, compassionate, a person of complete integrity."
Whitney was a world traveler and photographer who made a habit of taking photos with people he met, then sending them a print and a handwritten note of thanks or encouragement.
Whitney was also a Republican politician, losing to Eugene McCarthy in the 1964 U.S. Senate race and to Rudy Perpich in the 1982 gubernatorial election.
"Wheelock was instrumental in the formation of our firm in 1961," Norwest Equity Partners said in a prepared statement. "His collaboration with many of Minnesota’s leading business investors at the time, including the late Tom Crosby, helped create a whole new investment vehicle within the financial services industry. The Minnesota business community will miss him."