Peter Landau

News Organizations and Titles: 23 years at Institutional Investor, including editor, 1971-91; 12 years (1955-67) at Newsweek, finishing as associate editor in the business section.

Legacy: His 20 years as publisher Gilbert Kaplan's editor marked one of the most fruitful relationships in U.S. magazine journalism. Asked why he lasted so long, Mr. Landau said: "I always recognized it was Gil's magazine." Mr. Landau succeeded II's first editor, George Jerome Waldo Goodman (television's "Adam Smith"), carrying on his tradition of writing about money managers in personal, colorful, funny and increasingly sophisticated terms. Says Mr. Landau, who usually rushed around II's offices in stocking feet at deadline time: "I made it run."

Journalistic Progeny: With Mr. Kaplan, Mr. Landau was active in the hiring of Fred R. Bleakley, who went on to edit the American Banker and report for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and who is now II's international editor, and David Cudaback, who succeeded Mr. Landau as editor.

Personal: Born July 16, 1933, New York City. He is historian of St. Andrew's Golf Club, Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., the oldest (1888) continuously existing golf club in the United States.

Family: Only child of Charlotte and Edward Landau.

Awards:During Mr. Landau's tenure, II won 43 awards, including a half-dozen Gerald Loeb awards and a National Magazine Award for a piece by free-lancer Chris Welles, which Mr. Landau edited.

Books:Author, 1996, with former Newsweek co-worker Shepherd Campbell, "Presidential Lies: The Illustrated History of White House Golf."

Education: Duke University, B.A., economics, 1955; Columbia University, M.S., economics,1959.

Home run stories or accomplishments: Mr. Kaplan went into Mr. Landau's office one day shortly after he was made editor and said: "We have to name the best analysts on Wall Street." With football fan Wayne Welch, then editor of another II publication called Corporate Financing, Mr. Landau came up with the idea of a team of analysts, which quickly became the Institutional Investor All America Research Team, with winners dressed in gridiron uniforms. Still a powerful tally, it determines analysts' career paths and pay raises, which can hit $1 million if an analyst makes it.

What he made news or headlines for: A quiet, behind-the-scenes worker, Mr. Landau achieved little fame while II's editor. It was only after his editing career, when he co-wrote "Presidential Lies," that America saw him on many TV talk shows. President Clinton picked up a line from the book, in which Warren Harding happens to make a good shot on a bad day and says: "Even a blind sow will find an acorn once in awhile."

What he has said about financial journalism: "I think Watergate drew many hustling, investigative reporters into journalism, some of whom went into financial journalism. It's just getting better and better."

What others have said about him: Mr. Kaplan: "If you think about the things for which Institutional Investor is regarded--really exciting stories and the quality of the writing--Peter Landau is the lifeblood of the operation. He sets the literary standards of the magazine.