Bernard "Bernie" Cornfeld (17 August 1927 – 27 February 1995) was a prominent businessman and international financier who sold investments in US mutual funds, and who was tried and acquitted for mismanagement of the Investors Overseas Services (IOS).
He had a stammer as well as a natural gift for selling and when a schoolfriend's father died, the two of them used the US$3,000 insurance money to purchase and run an age and weight guessing stand at the Coney Island funfair.
In the 1960s, Cornfeld formed his own mutual fund sales company, Investors Overseas Services (IOS), with principal offices in Geneva, Switzerland, although it was incorporated in Panama.
[2] Cornfeld numbered among his friends Elizabeth Taylor, Michelle Phillips, Warren Beatty, Laurence Harvey, Victor Lownes, Hugh Hefner, Richard Harris, Al Capp, Tony Curtis, Howard Sackler, John Heyman and Simon Reuben.
The club, an attempt by Brandt to re-create his New York disco, The Electric Circus in Los Angeles was a failure, and Cornfeld closed the business.