their own firm, Wasserstein, Perella & Co., McGuire, along with a select group of managing directors, joined them. McGuire remained with the company until 1994, when Merrill Lynch successfully lured him over to help build their M&A business. He worked at Merrill Lynch until 2000, when he joined Morgan Stanley.
As global co-head of mergers and acquisitions for Morgan Stanley, McGuire spearheaded a number of deals including the $19.8 billion sale of Nabisco Holdings to Philip Morris. He also executed a range of domestic and international financial advisory transactions, including takeover defense, merger restructuring, acquisition, and divestiture mandates. At the time there was an exodus of senior executives due to an ongoing battle between then-CEO Philip Purcell and a group of dissident investors and former executives. In May 2005, McGuire was recruited to Citigroup. Purcell resigned shortly thereafter.
McGuire is now responsible for 2,000 employees and billions of dollars in revenues. The only African American on Wall Street who commands a larger staff is Stanley O’Neal, the CEO of Merrill Lynch. But McGuire understands that with great power comes great responsibility, and part of that responsibility includes helping African Americans who are coming up behind him. Among them is Robert Reffkin, a former investment banking associate at Lazard who is currently a White House Fellow. “I first sent McGuire an e-mail when I was in school, asking for his advice on how to pursue investment banking. He responded about three weeks later. It must have been the middle of the night,” recalls Reffkin. “To me, that was better than responding immediately. It shows me that when a young person is seeking advice, he will always respond, even when he’s too busy and must do it on his own time.”
Not that he has much free time. He frequently flies to Europe and Asia, managing senior client relationships and analyzing the next strategic transaction. “The way you get to be in the Hall of Fame is to outperform the competition on a regular basis,” McGuire says. “It’s the same with deals. And the responsibility of leading the team is with me.” When the deal between Georgia-Pacific and Koch was announced the following trading day, Wall Street reacted positively, and Georgia-Pacific stock gained 36% on the news. Such power comes with the territory when you’re brokering deals at this level. Not only are McGuire and Lewis moving markets, they’re helping to ensure that there are more African American market movers in the pipeline for years to come.
Additional reporting by Tennille M. Robinson & Stephanie Young
RAYMOND J. MCGUIRE,Managing Director and Co-Head of GlobalInvestment Banking, Citigroup
Age: 49
Hometown: Dayton, OH
Education: Received his M.B.A. and J.D. from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School (1984) and a B.A., cum laude, from Harvard College (1979)
Experience: Prior to joining Citigroup, McGuire was global co-head of Mergers & Acquisitions at Morgan Stanley; managing director in the Mergers and Acquisitions Group of Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.; and one of the original members of Wasserstein, Perella & Co. Inc., where he became