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From Barron's 6-4-07:

"Back when Andrew Peck was a young analyst -- which wasn't that long ago -- his boss Ron Baron told him to book a flight to Mexico. The iconoclastic growth-fund manager wanted his protégé to see the pioneering outsourcing effort of the Libbey Glass operation there up close.

A business trip to Mexico might seem like a marvelous perk for an up-and-comer, but it turned out the glass and tableware maker's plant was in the dusty industrial town of Monterrey. It was also mid-summer, and the factory didn't have air conditioning. "I always seemed to end up with those awful assignments," says Peck, of his formative lessons in first-hand company research.

Mostly, however, Peck's had a pretty smooth, comfortable rise in the Baron organization. In 2003, the Stanford business and law-school grad was plucked from the analyst ranks and installed as day-to-day portfolio manager of the Baron Asset Fund (ticker: BARAX), the firm's flagship investment vehicle which he co-runs with its namesake.

"Ron Baron is trying to build a sustainable organization and not have everything reliant on Ron Baron," says Kerry O'Boyle, an analyst who covers Baron Asset for fund researcher Morningstar. "He's clearly thinking about what's next."

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