Warren V. “Pete” Musser, born in 1928, is the past Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Safeguard Scientifics, Inc., which he founded in 1953.
He is currently Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer, of Epitome Systems; and the Managing Director of the Musser Group, in Wayne, Pennsylvania, a financial consulting company. He helped the formation and success of many Fortune 500 companies, including QVC, Comcast, Novell, Inc. among others.
He faced financial ruin in 2001 as he resigned as CEO from Safeguard Scientifics, after “Safeguard disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that a business run by Musser’s wife was in default on a $2.1 million loan that Safeguard made to it in 1998” and “that Musser had been forced to sell 7.5 million shares of his stock in the company to satisfy “personal obligations under several margin loan arrangements.” “Finally, battered by deep personal losses, the problems he had caused his company and the embarrassment over the disclosure of Safeguard’s dealings with his wife, Musser stepped down under pressure.”
Read this March 2001 Fortune magazine profile of the impact the dot-com bust had on Musser’s fortune. Read a 2007 Philadelphia magazine profile here.
He is a 1949 graduate of Lehigh University.