Profits & Passions: Rick Phillips, Toying With Sports Cars

Rick Phillips was hard-wired at birth to be both a financier and a gear head.

"I've been a gear head since I was 6, maybe earlier," the 45-year-old Phillips said. That's when he modified the family riding mower, taking off the blade and creating a go-cart for himself. "I rode it around the yard

Phillips said that "somehow" he convinced his parents to buy him a minibike when he was 6, as well. "I won't let my kids have one until they're 20," he said of his three sons, ages 3, 6 and 9. But the minibike turned into a motorcycle, the lawnmower into a real go-cart he bought out of a catalogue, and those toys into fast cars - 14 if them, at last count.

As for the financier part of his hard-wiring, "when I started playing around with my lawnmower, I needed gasoline and parts," he said. His father owned a restaurant in their hometown of Bedford, N.H., and "as soon as I was able to stand up and wash dishes, I worked for him." He had a paper route. He shoveled driveways, raked lawns - "all to save up money to fuel my passion, I guess." And, "yeah," he's still doing it, making money to fuel his passion for fast cars.

The $64 question

Phillips worked his way through college, receiving both Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, when he sort of fell into his career. "I didn't know what to do with my life," he said after he graduated in 1984, when a friend at Kidder Peabody & Co. in Manhattan suggested he apply for a job there as a corporate finance analyst. At the time Phillips was dating a young woman in New Jersey, he'd be making enough money to take her out on dates in the city, and he'd been living in Manhattan, so what's not to like?

He took the job and discovered he was working "60, 80, sometimes 100 hours a week." That young woman wound up as somebody else's wife, "but I did save enough money to buy cars and go to graduate school."

He returned to Wharton for an MBA in finance, then worked for a few financial firms between 1988 and 1993 before joining Suffolk Capital Management in Manhattan as director of research, almost immediately taking responsibility for developing and launching the firm's first hedge fund. "Back then most people called them limited partnerships, which is what they are," he said. The fund started with $3 million, mostly the partners' money and climbed to about $100 million in four years, when he launched a small-cap institutional equity product "that went from zero to about $1 billion under management" between 1996 and 2004.

By then Phillips had moved to Weston where his wife, Lynn, and he began raising their family. He had been commuting into the city for almost eight years when their third son was born in 2003. "I was leaving at 5:30 in the morning and, in the best case, would get home at 7:30 at night. In the winter I would come and go in darkness and eat lunch at my desk, so I never saw the sun until weekends."

One bitter cold February morning in 2004 "I was standing on the train platform in Westport waiting for 6:05 when I said to myself, 'What am I doing this for?' "

He was 43.

Priceless

Phillips quit Suffolk Management and started his own long/short equity hedge fund in Westport he called Kettle Creek Partners. "It's a hedge fund in the traditional sense of the word," he said. "We just finished our second year with $12 million under management. My goal is $300 million." Best of all, he gets to spend more time with his family. And his toys.

He has accumulated 14 sports cars, "mostly '60s sports cars like my 1967 Camero convertible and a '67 Aston Martin DB6." On lucky weekends he takes one of them up to Lime Rock, where he gets some track time with other gear heads. "My wife says this is my one indulgence," he said. "I'm home every day from work and I spend a lot of time with the kids." His wife even bought him driving lessons in California for his 40th birthday. He has a photograph of himself of which he's proud, in a one-seater racing car from the lessons.

The sports cars are scattered around his own garage, a garage down the street he rents, and at his mother's house in New Hampshire. "The Camero sits out in the rain, unfortunately."

He still is intense and competitive at work, but "I'm home every day from work and I spend a lot of time with the kids," he said. "And I can make it to a school play' my little one is in now because I can leave work early. That's worth so much I can't put a price on it."

Occupation: Hedge fund principal

Passion: Fast cars

Works in: Westport

Lives in: Weston