Investment bank Evercore has hired J. Stuart Francis as a Senior Managing Director in its Technology Group. Mr. Francis will be based in Evercore’s office in Menlo Park.
Mr. Francis, who will join Evercore in August, was most recently Vice Chairman of Investment Banking and Chairman of the Global Technology Group for Barclays since 2008, when Barclays purchased the US businesses of Lehman Brothers. Prior to that, he was Vice Chairman of Lehman Brothers and Chairman of the Lehman Brothers Global Technology Group since 2003. He was Head of the Global Technology Group at Lehman Brothers from 1991 to 2003 where he was a member of the Lehman Brothers Investment Banking Executive Committee and the Operating Committee.
“Since inception, Evercore’s business philosophy has been summarized in the same two words: excellence and integrity. It would be hard to find a senior banker who better epitomizes these attributes than Stu Francis, and that’s why we are so excited to have him join us. He is the ideal senior banker to lead our Silicon Valley business, where we are engaged in a long-term build-up and which is a top priority for the firm,” said Roger Altman, Evercore’s Executive Chairman.
Mr. Francis’ recent transactions include advising Qualcomm on the sale of its Omnitracs division to Vista Equity Partners for $800 million and on the sale of its BWA division to Bharti for $1 billion, advising Google on the sale of its Motorola cable TV set top box business to Arris for $2.4 billion, serving as joint book runner for Facebook on its $16 billion IPO, its $4 billion equity follow-on offering and its $6.5 billion credit facility, and advising Abbott Labs on its $55 billion spin-off of AbbVie.
“Stu’s extraordinary experience, judgment, broad network of relationships and reputation for integrity will serve our technology clients well. He is an important addition to the build-out of our world-class technology effort, which in recent years has provided advisory services to clients like Dell, Samsung, Accenture, Ericsson, Nokia, Nuance, and many others,” said Ralph Schlosstein, Evercore’s CEO.
Evercore Partners is an investment banking boutique providing advisory services to multinational corporations on mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, restructurings and other strategic corporate transactions. Evercore also has an investment management business through which it manages private equity and venture capital funds for institutional investors. The firm has offices in New York; Boston; Waltham, MA; Chicago; Houston; Los Angeles; Minneapolis; Menlo Park; San Francisco (2 offices); Washington DC; Toronto; London; Madrid; Singapore; Aberdeen, Scotland; Mexico City and Monterrey, Mexico; Hong Kong; and Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil (www.evercore.com).
“It is clear that Evercore has a leading strategic advisory business and a rapidly expanding equity business. I look forward to helping deliver these critical skill sets to the global technology marketplace in a highly focused manner,” said Mr. Francis.
© 2014 PEPD • Private Equity’s Leading News Magazine • 5-7-14
