A12| Saturday/Sunday, March 21 - 22, 2020 *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
MICHEL ROUX
1941 — 2020French Chef Raised
(Dismal) U.K. Standards
BYJAMESR.HAGERTYgave up his executive job at AutoZone
and focused on philanthropy, skiing, art
collecting and fly fishing. “I have
achieved all my goals in business,” he
said at the time. He later was a direc-
tor of Burger King Corp. and Borders
Group Inc.
The son of a beer salesman, Mr. For-
manek attended Phillips Academy in
Andover, Mass., and earned an M.B.A.
at Harvard. He took an early interest in
business. Around age 12, he bought his
first stock: Bell Aircraft.
Colleagues at AutoZone recalled him
as modest and intensely focused on de-
tails. Richard C. Smith, senior vice
president, human resources, at Auto-
Zone, said Mr. Formanek held regular
“find-it-fast-fix-it-fast” meetings, at
which executives were expected to
identify problems and propose ways to
resolve them.
Each meeting included a review of
problems identified at the prior ses-
sion. “You had a very high sense of ur-
gency so that when it came around you
could say it was done,” Mr. Smith said.
On one business trip, executives dis-
cussed where to eat. “How about
Wendy’s?” Mr. Formanek asked, in whatwas interpreted as more than a sugges-
tion. When they arrived at the fast-food
restaurant, he handed each of his col-
leagues a coupon for a discount meal.
Peter Raemin Formanek was born
July 13, 1943, in Connecticut.
Despite the family’s modest income,
his mother encouraged him to aim high
and took him on a tour of prep schools.
He won a scholarship to Phillips and
spent one summer working on an iron-
ore boat on the Great Lakes. A budding
entrepreneur, he made an unsuccessful
attempt to create a brand of laundry
detergent.
Mr. Formanek earned a bachelor’s
degree at the University of North Caro-
lina, where he majored in French, be-
fore enrolling at Harvard Business
School.
As a Woodrow Wilson fellow, he
taught at LeMoyne-Owen College in
Memphis in the late 1960s. An econom-
ics class he was due to teach failed to
attract any students, according to Mr.
Formanek’s family, until he changed the
name of the course to How to Be a Ty-
coon. The ploy quickly filled the class-
room.
—James R. Hagertyand so-called off-the-runs, or
those issued just a bit earlier,
traded with the same level of
fluidity, as investors got in
and out with ease.
But the level of trading dete-
riorated in recent years, partly
as investment banks were en-
couraged to reduce trading
risk, and in recent days, it has
become much harder for inves-
tors to transact.
“Did things trade? Yes. In
chaos? Yes,” says Susan Estes,
who runs OpenDoor Securities
LLC, a firm that provides
anonymous electronic Trea-
sury trading.
In the market for short-
term corporate debt known as
commercial paper, turmoil
sent the cost of borrowing for
30 to 270 days above the cost
of selling 30-year bonds in
some cases. Commercial paper
gives large businesses access
to money for very short peri-
ods to finance day-to-day op-
erations. While the market
stabilized by Friday, easing
fears, some remain worried
the market could act up again
once corporations start miss-
ing payments as the economic
impact of the virus deepens.
In the municipal-bond mar-
ket, where debt often goes for
months without a trade, con-
ditions are more difficult than
investors can recall. Investors
pulled $12.2 billion from mu-
nicipal bond funds during the
week ended Wednesday,
prompting them to seek bids
on long lists of bonds.
On Wednesday, rates shot
up to 5.2% from 1.3% last week
on variable rate municipal
bonds that reset their rates
every week according to what
bondholders are willing to pay,
according to the Sifma Munici-
pal Swap Index.
“Trading is very thin,” said
Dan Genter, CEO of Los Ange-
les-based RNC Genter. “There’s
no new-issue market at all.”
The state of Wisconsin will
pay about $64,700 in interest
for the week that began
Wednesday, compared with
about $15,500 the previous
week, on its roughly $58 mil-
lion in variable-rate bonds,
says David Erdman, the state’s
capital finance director. Mr.
Erdman has been holding off
on a $281 million bond sale he
had hoped to do last week.
Economists including Bar-
clays PLC’s Joseph Abate pre-
dict Fed moves such as its
backstop for commercial paper
will ease pressures on the
funds, though many traders
say the going is slow.
“Improved, yes. Recovered,
no,” says Lou Brien, strategist
at DRW Trading Group in Chi-
cago.short-term corporate loans
has become surprisingly frag-
ile, some participants said.
The disruptions have
prompted a series of extraor-
dinary Federal Reserve inter-
ventions. Many traders ex-
press optimism that those
fixes will help return markets
to normal.
Even so, the events are add-
ing to uncertainty about the
outlook for the economy and
the price some borrowers will
pay simply to stay afloat at a
time when many Wall Street
banks forecast a sharp decline
in U.S. economic output for
the second quarter at least.
“Disrupting access to new
funding curtails credit to com-
panies, local authorities and
others,” says Mohamed El-
Erian, Allianz SE’s chief eco-
nomic adviser. “This adds an-
other shock to an economy
that’s reeling” from the spread
of the novel coronavirus, the
stock-market tumble and col-
lapsing oil prices.
The most apparent disrup-
tion has come in what is typi-
cally the most robust of finan-
cial markets: U.S. Treasurys. On
Wednesday, the price of the
benchmark 10-year Treasury
note, which usually climbs amid
weakness for stocks, instead
fell 2 17/32 points, sending its
yield up to 1.259%.
There were signs of im-
provement on Thursday and
Friday, as the 10-year note’s
price rose more than 3 points.
But prices in the municipal
market deteriorated sharply at
the end of the week, with yields
on AAA-rated 10-year bonds
rising to 2.79% Friday after-
noon from 1.84% Wednesday,
even after the Fed moved Fri-
day morning to shore up mu-
nicipal money-market funds.
The losses came even as the
Fed has committed to make
massive purchases to help bol-
ster Treasury markets. Some
of the weakness is likely due
to an expected surge in new
issuance, as well as to the col-
lapse of some trades using
borrowed money.
Still, longer-term Treasurys
generally have been declining
in price since their yield set a
record low March 9, setting off
alarms about how that market
is functioning. Before 2008,
both newly issued Treasurys
ContinuedfromPageOne
Bond
Markets
Feel Strain
FROM PAGE ONE WORLD WATCH
NORTH KOREATwo Short-Range
Ballistic Missiles FiredNorth Korea test-fired two
apparent short-range ballistic
missiles off its east coast on
Saturday morning, Seoul’s mili-
tary said.
The launch was the North’s
third weapons test this month.
They all have involved what the
South Korean military assumes
to be short-range missiles.
The two presumed missiles
were fired from the North Pyon-
gan province, located in the
country’s northwest along the
Chinese border, and splashed
down into the waters between
South Korea and Japan, Seoul’s
military said.
North Korea didn’t comment
on the launch.
The projectiles covered a dis-
tance of more than 250 miles
and soared more than 30 miles
high.
— Timothy W. MartinNETHERLANDSLife Term Is Given in
Tram Terrorist AttackA Dutch court convicted a radi-
calized Muslim man Friday of
murder with a terrorist motiveand sentenced him to life impris-
onment for opening fire on a tram
and killing four people last year.
The defendant, 38-year-old
Gokmen Tanis, wasn’t in court
because of restrictions to prevent
the spread of the coronavirus.
Mr. Tanis walked onto a tramin Utrecht on March 18, 2019, and
used a pistol with a silencer to
shoot passengers. He then jumped
out of the tram and shot a driver
sitting behind the wheel of a car.
The attack, which occurred just
days after the massacre at two
mosques in New Zealand, sent the
city of Utrecht into lockdown until
he was detained hours later.
—Associated PressPAKISTANCoal Mine Explosion
Kills 7 and Injures 3Seven Pakistani miners were
killed and three injured in an ex-
plosion Friday inside a coal mine
in southwest Pakistan, a local
mining official said.
Rescue workers had recov-
ered all of the bodies, said
Shafqat Mahmood, a mine in-
spector in Baluchistan province,
where the explosion occurred. He
said investigators are trying to
determine the cause of the blast.
—Associated PressNEW START: A bonfire marks the Kurdish New Year in Erbil, Iraq.
Officially, all but small events were canceled amid the pandemic.GAILAN HAJI/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCKW
hen Michel Roux arrived in
Britain in the mid-1960s, he
spoke little English and was
appalled by the food.
“It was a dark age,” he told The Wall
Street Journal later. “There was no
way you could have a decent meal. The
food was pretty nasty. There were a
few hotels like the Connaught or the
Savoy where you could have had some-
thing that was fairly good to good, but
nothing excellent, nothing delicate and
fine.”
Mr. Roux, who died March 11 at the
age of 78, and his older brother Albert
helped lift the British out of that dark
age. In 1967, they opened a French res-
taurant, Le Gavroche, in London. In
1982, it became the first restaurant in
Britain to win a three-star rating from
the Michelin Guide.
The brothers’ Waterside Inn, on the
banks of the Thames in the village of
Bray, near London, achieved the same
Michelin rating in 1985. Queen Eliza-
beth II was among the customers. “She
always has the raspberry soufflé,”
Michel Roux said.
Their creations included pan-fried
lobster medallions with white port
sauce, ginger-flavored julienne of vege-
tables and pistachio creme brulée.
When they couldn’t find satisfactory
ingredients in Britain, they imported
or smuggled them from France.
The brothers also opened less-exclu-
sive restaurants, including Gavvers and
Rouxl Britannia, and published cook-
books. They helped train chefs who be-
came prominent, including Marco
Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay. In
the 1980s, they starred in a BBC cook-
ing show, “At Home With the Roux
Brothers.”
In one episode, Michel Roux demon-
strated how to make omelets. His
method involved searing the eggs in a
puddle of butter with a dash of oil.His brother dissented. “There is no
color in my omelet,” Albert Roux told
the Times of London. “I prefer mine to
look like a baby’s bottom. My brother
likes his brown.”
Michel Roux could be scathing about
other culinary stars. Of Jamie Oliver, a
British TV sensation, Mr. Roux once
said: “He’s not a chef.”M
ichel André Roux was born
April 9, 1941, in Charolles, a
small town in eastern France.
His family lived over a pork-butcher’s
shop owned by his paternal grandfa-
ther. In 1946, the family moved to a
cramped apartment on the eastern
edge of Paris. His father, a butcher,
squandered his modest income on gam-
bling and eventually deserted the fam-
ily. His mother worked as a cleaner.
In his 2000 memoir, “Life Is a
Menu,” Mr. Roux recalled beating egg
yolks with a fork to help his mother
make a sauce for veal. “I was fasci-
nated by the transformation as the
stock thickened and turned into a
creamy sauce,” he wrote.
He learned to make vinaigrette fromPETER FORMANEK
1943 — 2020AutoZone Co-Founder Enlivened
A Dreary Branch of Retailing
B
uying parts for your car in the
1970s typically meant asking a
guy, slouched behind a grubby
counter with a cigarette or toothpick in
his teeth, to fetch a spark plug or wiper
blade.
Peter Formanek, a co-founder of Au-
toZone Inc., helped change that. The
chain opened clean, brightly lighted
stores that put the goods on display
and offered advice on how to install
them.
Mr. Formanek, who had been under
treatment for kidney cancer, died
March 7 at his home in Memphis. He
was 76.
He founded AutoZone with a former
fraternity brother, J.R. “Pitt” Hyde III, in- One of their insights was that peo-
ple visited parts stores when their cars
broke down, not when there was a sale
on brake fluid. Customers were looking
for a solution, not a daily special.
As president of AutoZone in the
1980s and early 1990s, Mr. Formanek
clamped down on costs by enforcing a
policy requiring him and other execu-
tives to double up in motel rooms cost-
ing $35 a night or less.
In 1994, at age 50, Mr. Formanek
mustard, vinegar and oil, to be sprin-
kled on dandelion salad with diced ba-
con. He helped make flans and tarts. In
the art of flipping crepes, he quickly
established himself as a virtuoso.
Following his brother’s example, he
became an apprentice pastry chef at
age 14. Three years later, he was hired
to make pastries at the British Em-
bassy in Paris. Then he worked as a
chef for Cécile de Rothschild.
“Working at the Rothschilds was like
a university, but a unique university,”
he recalled. “A university of respect, of
who you are, what you eat, the art you
appreciate.”
He moved to London to rejoin his
brother Albert, who cooked for Peter
Cazalet, a horse trainer with royal cli-
ents.
The brothers eventually divided
their culinary empire. Albert took con-
trol of Le Gavroche, whose name
means “street urchin,” while Michel
ran the Waterside Inn. They founded
the Roux Scholarship, providing train-
ing for chefs at top restaurants.
In 2008, Michel Roux moved to the
Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana. He
cited a fear of crime in London and
said there were also tax benefits. The
Swiss, he told the Daily Mail, “speak
French with a funny accent. They make
me laugh, and I don’t feel I always have
to look over my shoulder if I take a
walk.”
His survivors include three children
and his brother.
He gave this advice to aspiring chefs:
“Under is always better than over. If
you want to use a bit of alcohol or wine
on something, it has to be just a splash
and good wine. If you use fresh herbs,
don’t have a conflict of herbs, putting
coriander with tarragon, for example. If
you do put too much, you drain the fla-
vor....You have abused it.” Read a collection of in-depth profiles at
WSJ.com/ObituariesOBITUARIES
In Memoriam
For more information:
wsj.com/inmemoriam
!
" !# $ ! " #!
% #& '%
%"$!!# ! %
!
"!!( %$ $ ) !(
% %
%*+
,+,+ - $
% !% !.("
-
$ !#
!!
)! !! #!
# #!
/ (# /$ #!(
(" .
!
0$%1(
( #
(( (1 $#
# % .#($
! "$
! !
$ ( %
% !#
2( !!"$ !.$
- !
3 ,++4
. )% '%
,++5 ! # $ !!
)$! $ !
" !# !
)$ !. (1( !!"
$ . (()$!
)$ " $
$
"( .$
#
$ !
(
()$!
! $ )! "3
(
" % !/%$# $ %
! %
"$ % !
6$ #7 $ % #
" !! !!
$%1/%!"$ 8 $
!!
). !!
(!. "
% ( !
)" 1
%
!. % & %
% $ %.
( %. $ " #
! ! %% $ $
$# "
% ! ! # %
% ( )$!
$ " % % %
% #
$ #
!
!.(
$ .! %1"(
) . !.
)
" " (1
( !( "
)$ !. %! ). !!
! $ .! !2
(%! " )$
( $ ((!!
!#
8 ! "& ! .%
(!!) $% % (1 7!$
"9(
" !# 1 #$1 !#
% $
% $ &
/ 8)
: !
" !#
IN
MEMORIAM
Honor your loved
one’s life in The Wall
Street JournalShare your loved
one’s story with an
announcement in the
pages of The Wall Street
Journal, either in our
national or regional
editions. Our In Memoriam
notices provide a dignified
way for friends, family and
colleagues to pay tribute.© 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.To learn more, visit
WSJ.com/InMemoriamwsj_ 20200321 _a 012 p 2 jw 081000 7 a 01200 1 ____xa 2020 .crop.pdf 1 21 - Mar- 20 06 : 03 : 24