Goldman Sachs Lures Merger Master From Rival JPMorgan

By Liz Hoffman 

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.

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 [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 10, 2018 08:10 ET (12:10 GMT)

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