After 40 years on Wall Street, Jonathan Ziegler welcomes the serenity of Santa Barbara. The high-powered stock analyst now spends his days on the Santa Barbara County Grand Jury and pursuing his passions.
Raised in Maplewood, N.J., Ziegler spent a good amount of his youth in New York’s Greenwich Village. His father was an advertising executive and his mother a German teacher. They decided early on that Ziegler should have a practical education, which translated to a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Pennsylvania.
Ziegler had his own ideas about his future and changed his major midstream to finance — an area that had always intrigued him.
“Even as a kid, I was fascinated by the stock market,” he said. “I remember my grandmother talking about her AT&T dividends.”
After graduation, Ziegler married his college sweetheart, which exempted him from the draft for the Vietnam War. Instead of heading to battle, he took a position in a Newark bank, then attended Harvard University for a master’s degree in business administration. In 1966, the marriage exemption for the draft disappeared, and again Ziegler faced the probability of participating in a war he says he did not support. He chose to enlist in the National Guard, which required four months of active duty in Texas, one weekend a month in New Jersey and two weeks in Cape Cod.
“I was attending riot training while my wife and mother were at an anti-war rally in Washington, D.C.,” Ziegler said.
Next, Ziegler took a position at Smith Barney (now Citigroup) in New York. He was put into a training program to learn how to research, crunch numbers and prepare companies for filings to go public. For four years, he worked long days and paid his dues in the financial big leagues.
“I remember working on an adding machine for the first time,” Ziegler said. “It was a simple Sony calculator that cost $1,000, and we thought it was fantastic.”
Ziegler left Smith Barney to take a position as assistant to the chairman with International Food Service. Anticipating an influx of travel for American consumers, the company aggressively acquired resorts in Miami, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Ziegler says he enjoyed the frequent travel and variety of the job, until a dock strike made food shipping to the islands nearly impossible. He was laid off and went through a divorce.
For a fresh start, Ziegler relocated to Los Angeles and took a position with Merrill Lynch as a senior stock analyst. As a generalist, Ziegler monitored companies in the sectors of mining, forests, airlines and consumer products.
“I loved this job,” he said. “I was working with incredibly sharp people and always learning something new.”
Three years later, during what he calls a “stock market implosion,” Ziegler departed for more education and a master’s program at the London School of Economics. Sensing that international business was the direction of the future, he wanted to know more. But he returned to the United States after a year, deciding the program was more geared toward academics than business leaders.
Ziegler’s next job was at Credit Lyonnais, a U.S.-based French bank, as head of business development. With a territory of Arizona, Colorado and West Los Angeles, Ziegler spent six years wining and dining company heads to come on board for their wholesale corporate cash management efforts. In 1980, he joined Sutro & Co., a San Francisco-based investment firm, as a stock analyst. Mostly focused on retail and consumer products, Ziegler left 12 years later after going head to head with management over his refusal to approve the valuation of a pet supply company going public.
“I refused to stamp approval to something that was incorrectly valued, and in the end, they realized I was right,” Ziegler said.
From 1993 to 2000, Ziegler worked at Solomon Brothers in New York as a supermarket and drugstore analyst. Following large brands such as CVS, Walgreens and Kroger, he conducted pricing comparison studies and wrote industry reports, which were sold to brokers. Missing the West Coast, however, he took a position with Deutsche Bank in San Francisco, which also had him analyzing food and drug retailers.
Ziegler relocated to Santa Barbara in 2001 and began working as an independent researcher with a collective of former Wall Street executives. He began building his dream home and started to wind down his working hours. Knowing he has an active mind, a friend working as a local court translator suggested he sit in on an interesting trial. Ziegler found the legal process fascinating. Thus begun a year of him monitoring various trials as a curious observer.
Learning of his new preoccupation with the judicial system, a friend of Ziegler’s suggested he apply for the grand jury. In 2009, he became one of this 19-member group to weigh and debate civil complaints brought by residents about county, city or public agencies, including schools. Appointed by judges, the jury members work in committees to tackle various issues that affect the community. Ziegler notes that the $25-per-day stipend they receive isn’t why anyone takes the position.
“I love doing research and interacting with bright people,” he said. “We have civilized debate, and I get to experience democracy at work.”
After recently returning from a trip to Glacier National Park, Ziegler is hard at work editing photos — his favorite hobby next to viewing architecture and watch collecting. After living throughout the country, he considers Santa Barbara the perfect respite.
— Noozhawk contributing writer Jenn Kennedy can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Click here to see more of her work. Follow her on Twitter: @jennkennedy.
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