Goldman Lures Top JPMorgan Banker -- WSJ
11 August 2018 - 5:02PM
Dow Jones News
By Liz Hoffman
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (August 11, 2018).
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has poached a top JPMorgan Chase &
Co. deal maker, continuing a hiring spree that has brought more
than a dozen outsiders into the Wall Street powerhouse's upper
ranks in the past few months.
Kurt Simon -- a veteran banker in mergers as well as media and
technology, whose clients include Walt Disney Co. and Dell
Technologies Inc. -- will join Goldman as a partner later this
year, according to people familiar with the matter.
At Goldman, Mr. Simon will be a vice chairman of investment
banking and co-chairman of its technology, media and
telecommunications, or TMT, group, the people said.
Bankers regularly hop from one firm to another, but a move at
Mr. Simon's level is less typical. And he isn't going to a boutique
bank, but rather to another large firm, and a fierce rival at
that.
Goldman has hired 16 people firmwide at the elite rank of
partner in the past year, about half of them in its
investment-banking division, where top-tier relationships can
command huge fees.
The hiring push amounts to a bet -- a potentially expensive one
-- that the merger and capital-raising boom will continue. It is a
departure for Goldman, which has historically favored homegrown
talent.
The firm aims to add $5 billion in annual revenue by 2020. Its
revenues have stalled in recent years, as growth in areas such as
investment banking and asset management have barely compensated for
steady trading declines.
Investment bankers are expected to contribute about $500 million
of that figure. Mr. Simon would be the eighth partner that division
-- run jointly by John Waldron and Gregg Lemkau in New York, and
Marc Nachmann in London -- has hired.
Mr. Simon joined JPMorgan in 2002 from Merrill Lynch and ran the
firm's TMT group from 2009 to 2015. Since then, he has been its
global chairman of mergers and acquisitions, a job that typically
entails fewer management responsibilities and more client
face-time.
He has been one of JPMorgan's most visible bankers, brokering
big deals and frequently appearing on television to discuss the
M&A boom. He advised on SoftBank Group Corp.'s roughly $21
billion acquisition of Sprint Corp., Dell's $25 billion leveraged
buyout, AT&T Inc.'s $85 billion takeover of Time Warner Inc.
and Broadcom's $37 billion sale to Avago.
JPMorgan banking head Carlos Hernandez wrote in a memo to his
team that he didn't plan to replace Mr. Simon in his role, "given
the depth of talent" at the firm. Brian Marchiony, a JPMorgan
spokesman, said that "no one person owns relationships" with big
clients and added that many transactions are spearheaded by the
bank's CEO, James Dimon.
Mr. Simon has spent much of the past year across the table from
his new employer. He has been advising Disney on its planned
purchase of a big chunk of assets from 21st Century Fox, which
Goldman is advising. The Wall Street Journal's parent shares common
ownership with Fox.
Write to Liz Hoffman at liz.hoffman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 11, 2018 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)
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