News
 

Business college's donor is dead at 85

Bauer, who gave $40M to the UH business school, made his fortune 
with mutual funds

Cougar News Staff

Charles Theodore "Ted" Bauer, the businessman who made the second-largest donation to UH in the school's history, died Monday at The Methodist Hospital. He was 85.

Bauer, a Boston native and graduate of Harvard University, flew missions in South America, Africa and England as a naval aviator during World War II. He earned his master's in business administration from New York University after the war, and he was an investment manager in Baltimore before coming to Houston in 1969 to work for the American General Insurance Co.

In 1976, Bauer, Robert H. Graham and Gary T. Crum, who had all worked in asset management for AGI, founded AIM Management Group. The firm that began with a desk, two chairs and a telephone has become the seventh-largest mutual fund company in the world, boasting more than 2,300 employees and $148 billion in net assets.

Bauer resigned his post as AIM chairman in 2000 and was serving as president of the AIM Foundation at the time of his death.

UH's business college was named for Bauer in 2000, when he donated $40 million -- the second-largest donation ever given to the University -- to the college, a gift he hoped would help Houston's business community grow.

"No major city should be without a great university," Bauer told The Daily Cougar at the time of the donation. "I wanted to do something for the city of Houston, and this donation will enable the University to get the same designation as other important universities in Texas."

He later said having the college named for him was "fun, (and) a great honor."

The UH donation wasn't Bauer's only contribution to education. He funded a center for research of the human genome at Harvard and a science center and science teaching chair at Boston's Roxbury Latin School, of which he was a graduate.

Bauer has also worked to advance the education of Hispanic children in Houston schools through a foundation.

He is survived by his three children, Janet Bauer Hartman and Theodore Wingate Bauer of Baltimore and Charles Douglas Bauer of Houston; his wife, Ruth; and three grandchildren. Funeral services are pending.
 

 Send comments to dcnews@mail.uh.edu