Wilbur Ross, With Succession Question, Faces Challenge in Raising New Fund Jonathan Alcorn/Bloomberg News Wilbur L. Ross Jr., the chief executive and chairman of W. L. Ross & Company. Over the last decade on Wall Street, Wilbur L. Ross Jr. has been called many names, including a vulture, a turnaround king and Mr. Distress. One description thrown around these days, though, quickly gets under his skin: old. "Each weekend I play at least one and maybe two sets of tennis a day," Mr. Ross, 74, said in a telephone interview when asked how he responds to questions about his age. My doubles team was in the finals recently at my tennis club in Palm Beach and lost a tiebreaker after a three-hour match. "I must confess, by the end of the three hours, I was relieved it was over," he added, chuckling. For all the battles the rich and powerful of Wall Street wage, there is one opponent even they cannot beat, and that is Father Time. Mr. Ross oversees an empire at his private equity firm, W. L. Ross & Company, that controls $8 billion in assets. He has made billions of dollars through the years by buying unloved companies in unwanted industries, like steel, coal and, more recently, banks and financial institutions, and fixing them to sell for profits. But over the last year, Mr. Ross has struggled to raise a new fund. Many private equity firms that have hit the road to try to raise new funds are facing lukewarm receptions and tighter purse strings from investors. While some of the reluctance is a result of wobbly performances by some funds, the black eye that private equity has gotten this year in the brutal Republican primaries also appears to be giving large investors pause. In the case of Mr. Ross's new fund, investors and others say the looming question has been who is going to eventually fill his very big shoes in overseeing funds that typically last about a decade. "It was his vision, his skill, and if you've got a fund that's very dependent on that man playing that role and he's 74 years old, they're looking and wondering what it's going to be like when he's 84 years old," said Colin C. Blaydon, the director of the Center for Private Equity and Entrepreneurship at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He may look great now, but that clock is ticking. Mr. Ross is hardly the only aging business titan who has been slow to consider the succession question. Just last week, Warren E. Buffett, 81, said in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders that a successor had been selected, but he declined to say who it was. In August, Rupert Murdoch, 80, said Chase Carey, News Corporation's president, chief operating officer and deputy chairman, was his most likely successor, rather than his son James. Mr. Ross began to provide some indication of the firm's future when he sent investors a letter on Wednesday announcing that the firm was moving two of his longtime lieutenants into bigger leadership roles. Stephen J. Toy, 39, who was W. L. Ross's point man on its auto-related acquisitions in recent years, will be taking over as chairman of the firm's investment committee, and David H. Storper, 46, who oversees the firm's analysts and traders, will be in charge of proposing strategic initiatives for the firm. Mr. Ross was quick to note in an interview that he did not plan to leave the firm soon, saying he had just signed a contract to remain chief executive and chairman of W. L. Ross until 2015. The contract can be extended yearly after that. The private equity industry, now in its third decade, is filled with a generation of larger-than-life personalities who have achieved enormous financial success and now must decide whether they want their companies to outlast them. For a very select few of the mega-buyout firms, the answer has been to diversify the firm's products and go public. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company will exist well after the retirement of Henry R. Kravis, 68, one of its founders. And the Blackstone Group will remain when Stephen A. Schwarzman, 65, decides to step aside. The Carlyle Group, which has filed plans to go public, will also give David Rubenstein, 63, a co-founder, an eventual graceful exit. Mr. Ross, who sold his management company to the investment firm Invesco in 2006, set out more than a year ago with plans to raise a $4 billion fund - the same size as his last fund - to invest in companies in financial distress or bankruptcy. But the fund's target was lowered about six months ago to $2 billion, and late last year, W. L. Ross said in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had raised only about $450 million.