KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Jim Stowers Jr., the billionaire founder of one of the nation’s leading investment management firms who gave away most of his fortune to fight disease, has died. He was 90.
A joint release from the Kansas City, Mo., research firm that bears his name says Stowers died Tuesday after a period of declining health.
Stowers was a struggling mutual fund salesman in 1958 when he founded Twentieth Century Investors Inc. in Kansas City with only two mutual funds and $107,000 in assets.
It later became American Century Investments, one of the nation’s leading investment firms that now manages about $141 billion.
Stowers and his wife both successfully fought cancer. In 2000, they promised more than $1 billion to create the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City.