Brinson was born in
Seattle, Washington in 1943. His father worked as a bus driver and his mother worked at
Sears as a clerk. He graduated from
Seattle University in 1966 and would go on to receive an MBA from
Washington State University in 1968. First Chicago Investment Advisors became a separate money management company in 1983. Through the 1980s, Brinson established himself as a pioneer in the development of the theory of
asset allocation. Brinson pushed for allocation across stocks, bonds, cash, real estate, venture capital and other alternative asset classes using simple cost effective investment strategies. This would largely become conventional wisdom among money managers in the 1990s. In 1994,
Swiss Bank Corporation was in the midst of a series of acquisitions that included
O'Connor & Associates,
S.G. Warburg & Co.,
Dillon Read & Co. and culminated in the bank's merger with the Union Bank of Switzerland in 1998. Swiss Bank announced the acquisition of Brinson Partners and brought in Brinson to run the bank's asset management unit.
Swiss Bank Corporation paid US$750 million to acquire Brinson Partners, resulting in a profit to Brinson and his partners of US$460 million on the sale of their 75% stake in the company. Brinson retired from UBS in early 2000 just prior to the crash of the
dot-com bubble. Brinson had grown disenfranchised over the previous years with the runaway
internet bubble and its detachment from fundamentals and
value investing. ==Influence on investment and finance==