Ahead of the Pack: Garvice Kincaid and His Empire: A Southern Saga

Garvice Delmar Kincaid was an iconic visionary, a man ahead of his time, indeed Ahead of the Pack. This is the story of a Lexington, Kentucky Businessman who turned $1,500 into a $500 million empire over a 40-year period.

At his death, his five hundred-million-dollar empire was comprised of over one hundred and seventy-five organizations consisting of radio and television stations, banks, hotels, resorts, consumer finance companies, life insurance companies and real estate holdings. This is the true story of Kincaid's historic rise and the catastrophic fall of his organization after his death.

Kincaid began as a young man with an incredible need to be respected and appreciated, and as he became more successful, Garvice Kincaid tended to intimidate and offend people through brisk remarks and his talent for knowing more about other's business affairs than they did. Born in 1912, more than fifteen years before Warren Buffet, Kincaid understood that acquiring good businesses and holding them for the long-term was the path to great riches. Kincaid also preceded Michael Milken in understanding that distressed debt and real estate could provide enormous returns. Finally, he saw the importance of the media in its early years and appreciated how it had the ability to influence our perceptions and desires

In the mid-1950s and 1960s, Mr. Kincaid suffered two heart attacks and began a long estate planning process. He created an estate trust, made of three separate accounts. His trust was administered by his own bank, Central Bank & Trust, and was overseen by a three-person advisory committee, which included three alternates. He personally selected these six individuals to oversee his vast domain. The people on the Committee were Mr. Kincaid's trusted lieutenants; people he had worked with for many years. He believed they would work together to manage and grow his empire just as he had. What he did not factor in was the role that arrogance and greed would play in destroying his empire twenty years after his death in November 1975, at age of sixty-three.

The journey to the collapse of his financial kingdom started in the early 1980's. Ahead of the Pack author, Robert Mucci worked in the investment department of Kentucky Central Life Insurance Company from 1981 until 1995, witnessing and later researching the ruin. The downfall of Kentucky Central Life and its impact on the rest of Mr. Kincaid's empire cost his estate trust hundreds of millions of dollars. The impact on families, not just in Lexington, but around the country, including employees, agents, policyholders, and shareholders, is most certainly in the millions.

Garvice Kincaid is indeed a controversial figure around Kentucky.