“I used to work five days a week and take two days off; now I work two days a week and take five days off,” jokes John Hindelong. But as someone who achieved the No. 1 ranking in Hospital Management, Health Care Services or Health Care/Facilities 12 times, Hindelong rarely minded working hard. The 65-year-old attributes his success to dedication and having the good fortune to enjoy something at which he excelled. “I loved working with clients,” he says. “I loved the challenge of the job, and it was fun to go to work in the mornings.”
Hindelong began his Wall Street career as a pharmaceuticals analyst at Spencer Trask & Co. in 1973, while going to business school at Fairleigh Dickinson University at night. He says he recognized early on that there is more to health care than just drug companies: “I branched out into other segments of health care and found what I thought was an exciting group, the hospital group, and stayed with it.”
In 1977, Hindelong joined Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb. Three years later he was No. 1 in the newly created Hospital Management category. In 1989 he moved to Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Corp., which was acquired by Credit Suisse in 2000. Four years later he retired from research. “It is a 24-7 commitment to be an analyst and attempt to be No. 1 in Institutional Investor,” says Hindelong. He joined DFW Capital Partners as senior adviser to help the New York–based private equity firm find and assess opportunities in the health care sector.
