While awaiting a heart transplant, Robert D. Van Kampen, the founder of the Van Kampen mutual fund family, died Friday.

Van Kampen of Grand Haven was 60 when he died at Loyola University Medical Center in suburban Chicago.

He founded Van Kampen Merritt which sold for $200 million in 1984. Van Kampen Investments Inc. is now a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and has about $190 billion in assets.

Van Kampen was also the owner of one of the world's largest private collections of biblical manuscripts which included: papyrus and clay tablets, some of which date to 2000 B.C., a 4th-century Coptic Bible from Egypt, the book of Daniel from the 1455 Gutenberg Bible, Hebrew Torah scrolls and translations by 14th-century reformer John Wycliffe. 

Stay ahead of the news ... Sign up for our email alerts now
CLICK HERE