Robert H. Volk; Overhauled State’s Securities Law
Robert H. Volk, former state commissioner of corporations who streamlined the state’s 75-year-old securities law to entice corporations to locate in California, has died. He was 68.
Volk died Monday of cancer at his home in Los Angeles, said his daughter, Elisabeth Volk Lawler.
An attorney and businessman who also headed Unionamerica, the holding company of Union Bank, and his own airport facilities for executive planes, Volk was named corporations commissioner by Gov. Ronald Reagan in January 1967. His two years of state service brought major reform to the state securities office.
Volk told The Times in 1967 that he was in accord with what Reagan planned for state government, saying: “He’s firmly dedicated to principles; proposals are thrown up against these principles and if they fit, they stand and if not, they fall.”
Noting that California’s securities staff, at 430 employees, was larger than that of any other state, Volk pared his staff to 395. But he said he reduced its “paper shuffling” workload by 60%, enabling it to concentrate on rooting out fraud.
With professor Harold Marsh Jr., Volk engineered and steered through the Legislature the California Corporate Securities Act of 1968. With Marsh, he also wrote “Practice Under the Corporate Securities Law of 1968.”
The outdated law was scrapped. Volk’s new version simplified procedures for corporations to issue stocks in California, encouraging them to do business in the state. Among other provisions, the new law exempted securities listed on the New York Stock Exchange from state registration, under the theory that they were already scrutinized by federal authorities.
As corporations commissioner, Volk also served as chairman of the California Board of Investment and as a member of the California World Trade Authority.
With the new securities law and accompanying regulations going into effect in January 1969, Volk resigned, saying that he had accomplished his goals as commissioner.
He followed his father, Harry J. Volk, as president and chairman of Unionamerica. The younger Volk continued as chairman of Westmor Corp., following its spinoff from Unionamerica until it was sold in 1979.
A longtime director of the California Chamber of Commerce, in 1971 Volk was co-chairman of the California Space Shuttle Task Force to encourage NASA to locate at least part of its shuttle operations in the state.
Volk switched directions in 1980 when he acquired Martin Aviation, started in 1921 by aviator Eddie Martin. The company handles executive aircraft and passengers at John Wayne Airport in Orange County. Volk went on to acquire similar facilities at Long Beach and Burbank airports and in 1990 sold Martin Aviation, renaming his remaining two sites Media Aviation.
In addition to his work on corporate boards, Volk was on the board of overseers of the Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford, the Board of Visitors of the John E. Anderson School of Management at UCLA and the Board of Directors of the California State Parks Foundation, where he served as treasurer.
Born in East Orange, N.J., Volk moved to Los Angeles with his family when he was a teenager. He graduated from Stanford University and its law school and served in the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations.
He began his career as a corporate securities lawyer with the Los Angeles firm of Adams, Duque & Hazeltine in 1958.
Volk is survived by his wife, Barbara; three other children, Christopher of Seattle, William of San Francisco, and Lauren of Los Angeles; and 10 grandchildren.
Services will be private. The family has asked that memorial donations be sent to the Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles, 4650 Sunset Blvd. No. 29, Los Angeles, CA 90027, marked to the attention of senior vice president of development or to the American Cancer Society.
