A Generic-Sounding NameBefore Mr. Larson, Mr. Gates’s financial consigliere was Andrew L. Evans, a longtime friend who had previously served a six-month prison sentence for bank fraud. (Mr. Gates visited him in jail.) But when Mr. Evans’s criminal record was spotlighted in a front-page Wall Street Journal article in 1993, Mr. Gates sought out a new money manager.The next year, he hired Mr. Larson, who previously was a fund manager at Putnam Investments. In 1995, Cascade was incorporated in Washington State. The generic-sounding name with no reference to Mr. Gates allowed Mr. Larson to run a vast investment operation …
