In 1987 Clemente decided to launch a fund that could be traded on the NYSE. Husband Leo resigned his post as vice president at Van Eck Management, one of America's largest and oldest open-ended funds, to help create Clemente Global Growth Fund Inc., a publicly-traded money-manager specializing in buying undervalued stocks in Thailand, Malaysia, Corea and Japan.
Clemente travelled to Japan and got Sanyo Securities chairman Yozaburo Tsuchiya, an old friend, to pledge $20 million. In June Ladenburg, Thalmann led a group in underwriting 6,000,000 shares at $10 a share. That raised $60 million and got CGGF listed on the NYSE. The stock market crash five months later dropped prices to $4.38.
The stock's low price caught the eye of T. Boone Pickens III, son of the hostile takeover legend. During a two-month period in 1989 a Pickens-controlled group called Sterling Grace snapped up 19% of CGGF which was then managing assets of $54 million.
Just days after her mother's death, young Pickens and two associates walked into Clemente's office with a buyout offer. She rejected it. "You're going to fight us?" Pickens demanded. "Yes," she replied. "We're fighters."
Pickens failed to consider two factors. Investing in struggling companies had given Clemente a web of loyal connections. Also, many of the Japanese interns she had trained over the years had risen to key positions in corporations that owned CGGF shares.
"I was willing to turn the business over to [Pickens] if he could demonstrate to my shareholders that he had a competent performance record," Clemente says. "Which he didn't."
The large blocks of shares in the hands of Japanese and European Clemente allies made it impossible for Pickens to buy the 32% more he needed for control. After sinking more than a year into the takeover attempt, he was forced to retreat.
In 1988 Clemente's father returned to the Philippines to help Cory Aquino building her government. The time seemed right for Clemente to create a fund to invest in Philippine industries. In November 1989 she offered shares of First Philippine Fund Inc. with Paine Webber as lead underwriter. On the first day 7,800,000 shares bought at $12 soared to over $15.
In December Clemente flew to Manila to inspect the fund's investments. Two days later pro-Marcos forces staged the bloodiest coup attempt in Aquino's six-year rule. For three days Clemente was forced to stay in her Manila hotel room, listening to the crackle of machine gun fire and watching buildings burn. She immediately suspended FPF investments until the coup attempt had failed.
Among Clemente's biggest coups came in the spring of 1990 when she beat out 178 other fund managers to win the $50 million California state pension fund and the $125 million New York City pension fund.
In the aftermath of that triumph she wrote an autobiography published in Japan as Growing Up in World Street.
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The third closed-end fund Clemente sponsored was the Korea Clemente Emerging Growth Fund whose shares are being traded on the London Stock Exchange. In 1992 she launched the HK$550 million closed-end Cathay Clemente Ltd Fund targeting new Chinese ventures. She also set up a Beijing center to train China's up-and-coming securities professionals.
Clemente spent the early 1990s expanding the company's portfolio, and increasing the number of countries in which she invests from six to ten. In 1994 she won the contract to manage the California state pension fund which she will move onto the global playing field.
"You almost have to do that now, because everything is going global," she says. "By the year 2,000 this difference between being domestic and being global will disappear. We'll all be global. When I first came to New York--to give you an example about how fast things are moving--there were three Japanese restaurants. Now there're hundreds. They used to say eating sushi was barbaric, but now it's fashionable."
"You know the poem 'The Road Less Traveled?'" she says. "I always try to take that road.
"It's important to concentrate on the basics of being a human being. And the basics go back to your roots. Without that support I would have had trouble.
"The support and understanding of Leo is important. He's my friend and partner in business and in life."
On weekends the couple drive to their New Jersey cottage where she gardens, writes poetry and reads. Occasionally they fly to their Miami beach home.
