Seven years after then-Credit Suisse First Boston bought Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette for $13 billion–leading to an exodus of top bankers–powerful DLJ alumni are still pulling the levers all over Wall Street in mergers and acquisitions and finance.
Those bankers aren’t doing it at the same places where they landed after DLJ. Phase two is under way, as Deal Journal noticed last week when Lou Friedman, the star chairman of mergers and acquisitions at Bear Stearns, joined P. Schoenfeld Asset Management.
Where are they now? Deal Journal took a look at the stars and where they landed.
William Donaldson: The co-founder of the firm (left) had not one act after leaving, but many: he was under-Secretary of State in the Nixon administration, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, of health-care concern Aetna, and of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 2003 to 2005. As SEC chairman, Donaldson wore the mantle of a reformer, and he still is outspoken on regulation, telling CFO Magazine in February that regulators should stick to the overhauls of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and resist the pull toward “vague, principles-based” financial reporting, which is the system in Europe. Donaldson now heads Donaldson Enterprises, an investment firm he founded in 1981.
Moelis & Co.: Ken Moelis (right), the head of corporate finance for DLJ, left the firm practically on the day the Credit Suisse deal closed. He went to then-UBS Warburg, where he embarked on a hiring spree to build up the investment bank. Last year, Moelis left UBS and re-assembled a tight-knit team of former DLJers, including M&A expert Jeffrey Raich, leveraged finance banker Warren Woo, media banker Navid Mahmoodzadegan, and media banker John Momtazee and chemicals banker David Faris to found his eponymously named Los Angeles Moelis & Co. The team is advising Yahoo on its proposed takeover by Microsoft.
Bennett Goodman: The banker (left) built up such a powerful leveraged finance team at DLJ–stocked with former Drexel Burnham Lambert experts–and had such loyalty to DLJ that the reigning joke on Wall Street for a time was that Credit Suisse paid $13 billion just to get Bennett Goodman and his team. Goodman stayed with Credit Suisse for a time, then left in 2005 and founded hedge fund GSO Capital Partners. GSO now is part of private-equity firm Blackstone Group.
Herald “Hal” Ritch and Joel Cohen: Ritch co-headed M&A at DLJ, and after the Credit Suisse deal left for then-Salomon Smith Barney, where he co-headed mergers and acquisitions. In 2003, Ritch founded boutique Sagent Advisors with Cohen and a host of former DLJers, including Martin Murrer–who had left DLJ for Merrill Lynch first–and David Platter. Platter left DLJ for Bear Stearns, then joined Sagent and now plays a leading role in the financial institutions group advisory team at Credit Suisse.
Blackstone Group: Blackstone hoovered up several former DLJ stars, starting with former head of investment banking Hamilton “Tony” James (right), who now is Blackstone’s president and chief operating officer. James stayed at Credit Suisse for a time, then left for Blackstone, eventually hiring former colleague Jill Greenthal, the top telecommunications and media banker who had also stayed with Credit Suisse for a time. Greenthal is advising Microsoft on its bid for Yahoo. Another prominent DLJer at Blackstone is Joan Solotar, one of the top-ranked financial services analysts on Wall Street for years. Solotar stayed with Credit Suisse for a time, then joined Bank of America. She now is a senior managing director in public markets at Blackstone.
Safra Catz: This former DLJer (left) now is president and chief financial officer of Oracle Corp., where she helped spearhead the acquisition of PeopleSoft.
Tom Dean and Larry Schloss : Dean and Schloss led DLJ Merchant Banking (where Schloss was Dean’s boss for much of the time). After Kohlberg Kravis Roberts chief Henry Kravis criticized DLJ Merchant Banking for being in the auction of Warner Chilcott–and allegedly bidding against Credit Suisse clients–Schloss and Dean broke off and went their separate ways. Dean now heads Avista Capital Partners, and Schloss heads private-equity firm Diamond Castle.
Michael Connelly: the former telecommunications banker joined Carlyle Group as a senior adviser to its telecommunications & media team before passing away in December at the age of 55 after battling cancer.
What is interesting about the DLJ diaspora isn’t just that the players are still powerful, but how they have expanded beyond their focus at DLJ, which was renowned for its middle-market focus, its equity research and its leveraged finance team. The bankers who left expanded into big-ticket M&A, hedge funds and other areas DLJ didn’t focus on.
