Blair Effron
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Blair W. Effron (born 1962) is an American financier. Effron co-founded
Centerview Partners Centerview Partners is an American independent investment banking firm. Centerview operates primarily as an investment banking advisory firm. Centerview has 60 partners and 300 professionals with expertise across a wide range of industries, ge ...
, a leading global investment banking firm based in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. Centerview has offices in London, Paris, Chicago, Los Angeles, Palo Alto and San Francisco. The firm provides advice on mergers and acquisitions, financial restructurings, valuation, and capital structure to companies, institutions and governments. Effron is also active in
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...
politics and was a prominent supporter of
John Kerry John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician and diplomat who currently serves as the first United States special presidential envoy for climate. A member of the Forbes family and the Democratic Party, he ...
's 2004 presidential campaign, as well as subsequent presidential campaigns for
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...
,
Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
and Joe Biden.


Early life

Effron grew up in a Jewish family in
Poughkeepsie, New York Poughkeepsie ( ), officially the City of Poughkeepsie, separate from the Town of Poughkeepsie around it) is a city in the U.S. state of New York. It is the county seat of Dutchess County, with a 2020 census population of 31,577. Poughkeepsi ...
, son of James W. Effron, president of Effron Oil. Effron graduated with a BA from
Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
in 1984 and an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1986. He began his career at Dillon, Read & Co. and would remain with the firm and its successors (
Warburg Dillon Read Dillon, Read & Co. was an investment bank based in New York City. In 1991, it was acquired by Barings Bank and, in 1997, it was acquired by Swiss Bank Corporation, which was in turn acquired by UBS in 1998. History Carpenter & Vermilye Dillon Read ...
,
UBS Warburg UBS Group AG is a multinational Investment banking, investment bank and financial services company founded and based in Switzerland. Co-headquartered in the cities of Zürich and Basel, it maintains a presence in all major financial centres ...
and UBS Investment Bank) over the next 20 years. Effron received a brief mention as an associate at Dillon Read in the
Barbarians at the Gate ''Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco'' is a 1989 book about the leveraged buyout (LBO) of RJR Nabisco, written by investigative journalists Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. The book is based upon a series of articles written by th ...
involved in the buyout of RJR Nabisco by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.


Career

Effron began his career in investment banking in the early 1980s and built up a reputation as one of the leading bankers in the
consumer product A final good or consumer good is a final product ready for sale that is used by the consumer to satisfy current wants or needs, unlike a intermediate good, which is used to produce other goods. A microwave oven or a bicycle is a final good, but ...
s industry and for more than ten years since founding Centerview has been one of the industry's top generalist banker across several industries. At UBS, Effron was Group Vice Chairman of UBS AG and a member of the Board of UBS Investment Bank, where he also sat on several management committees. Effron's major coup came in 2005 when he advised Gillette on its $57 billion sale to
Procter & Gamble The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/consumer he ...
, which was the largest
mergers and acquisitions Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspect ...
transaction of 2005. Among Effron's other major deals are: *
General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...
's sale of $200B of financial assets. *
Time Warner Cable Time Warner Cable, Inc. (TWC) was an American cable television company. Before it was acquired by Charter Communications on May 18, 2016, it was ranked the second largest cable company in the United States by revenue behind only Comcast, operat ...
on its $79 billion merger with
Charter Communications Charter Communications, Inc., is an American telecommunications and mass media company with services branded as Spectrum. With over 32 million customers in 41 states, it is the second-largest cable operator in the United States by subscribe ...
. * 21st Century Fox on $71.3 billion transactions with
The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Disney Stud ...
. * Kraft Foods Group, Inc. on its $58 billion merger with Heinz *
InBev InBev () is a brewing company that resulted from the merger between Belgium-based company Interbrew and Brazilian brewer AmBev which took place in 2004. It existed independently until the acquisition of Anheuser-Busch in 2008, which formed Anheus ...
's $52 billion acquisition of Anheuser-Busch * GE on the $32 billion combination of its oil & gas business with Baker Hughes. *
H. J. Heinz Company The H. J. Heinz Company is an American food processing company headquartered at One PPG Place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was founded by Henry J. Heinz in 1869. Heinz manufactures thousands of food products in plants on six contin ...
's $28 billion sale to an investor consortium consisting of
3G Capital 3G Capital is a Brazilian-American multibillion-dollar investment firm, founded in 2004 by Alex Behring, Jorge Paulo Lemann, Carlos Alberto Sicupira, Marcel Herrmann Telles and Roberto Thompson Motta. The firm is best known for implementing zer ...
and
Berkshire Hathaway Berkshire Hathaway Inc. () is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Its main business and source of capital is insurance, from which it invests the float (the retained premiu ...
* Lorillard's $27.4 billion sale to
Reynolds American Reynolds American, Inc. is an American tobacco company which is a subsidiary of British American Tobacco and is the second-largest tobacco company in the United States. Its holdings include R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, American Snuff Company ...
*
Unilever Unilever plc is a British multinational consumer goods company with headquarters in London, England. Unilever products include food, condiments, bottled water, baby food, soft drink, ice cream, instant coffee, cleaning agents, energy dri ...
's $24 billion acquisition of
Bestfoods Hellmann's and Best Foods are American brand names that are used for the same line of mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, sauce, salad dressing, condiments and other food products. They have been owned by the British multinational company Unilever sinc ...
* PepsiCo's $21 billion acquisition of
The Pepsi Bottling Group The Pepsi Bottling Group, Inc. was the world's largest bottler of Pepsi-Cola beverages. PBG sales of Pepsi-Cola beverages accounted for more than one-half of the Pepsi-Cola beverages sold in the United States and Canada and about 40 percent worl ...
and
PepsiAmericas PepsiAmericas, Inc. was the world's second-largest bottler of Pepsi-Cola products, under contract with product owner PepsiCo. PepsiAmericas also held contracts to produce beverages for Dr Pepper Snapple Group and smaller regional brands. PepsiA ...
* GE's $18 billion sale of remaining 49% interest in
NBCUniversal NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by Comcast and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States. NBCUniversal is primaril ...
to Comcast * GE's $13.5 billion pending acquisition of Alstom. * Diageo's $10 billion sale of Pillsbury to
General Mills General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company orig ...
* The Hillshire Brands Company $8.6 billion sale to
Tyson Foods Tyson Foods, Inc. is an American multinational corporation, based in Springdale, Arkansas, that operates in the food industry. The company is the world's second-largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork after JBS S.A. It annually ...
. * Diageo's $8 billion purchase of
Seagram The Seagram Company Ltd. (which traded as Seagram's) was a Canadian multinational conglomerate formerly headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. Originally a distiller of Canadian whisky based in Waterloo, Ontario, it was once (in the 1990s) the ...
's wine and spirits business *
News Corporation News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New ...
's $6 billion acquisition of Dow Jones * PepsiCo's $5.4 billion acquisition of Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods * NewsCorp's separation of the company into 21st Century Fox and NewsCorp. In July 2006, Effron co-founded
Centerview Partners Centerview Partners is an American independent investment banking firm. Centerview operates primarily as an investment banking advisory firm. Centerview has 60 partners and 300 professionals with expertise across a wide range of industries, ge ...
along with Robert Pruzan, formerly CEO of North America at
Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein Kleinwort Hambros is a private bank owned by Société Générale that offers financial services from offices throughout the United Kingdom and Channel Islands. Kleinwort Hambros focuses on private banking, providing a range of services for high ...
and President of Wasserstein Perella & Co. Additional Centerview co-founders included Stephen Crawford, former co-president at Morgan Stanley, and Adam Chinn, a former partner at Wachtell Lipton.
James M. Kilts James M. Kilts was a chief executive officer of The Gillette Company. He negotiated the sale of the company to Procter & Gamble for US$57 billion. Press investigators estimate that he stood to gain more than $165 million personally in the purchase. ...
, former CEO of Gillette, heads the firm's private equity fund.


Other affiliations

Effron serves on the board of trustees of the Council on Foreign Relations (Vice-Chairman),
Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 milli ...
(Treasurer), the
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, New Visions for Public Schools, Partnership for New York City, and
Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
. He also sits on the advisory board of The Hamilton Project at the
Brookings Institution The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in e ...
. Active in the Democratic party, Effron was a prominent supporter of John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign and an active supporter of Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign. He also hosted Obama at his Upper East Side Manhattan home in May 2014 and Hillary Clinton in June 2015. Effron contributes political and business commentary to outlets including the ''
Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...
'', ''
The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'', ''
CNBC CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk sho ...
'' and other publications. In August 2022, Effron was appointed by President Joe Biden as a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.


References


External links


Centerview Benefits from Wall St.'s Pivot to Smaller Banks
by David Gelles. ''The New York Times''
The Deal Makers behind 2015 ‘s Biggest Tie Ups
Dana Mattioli, Dana Cimilucca, Shayndi Raice ''
The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' * How to Foster Long-Term Innovation Investment, Center for American Progress, Co-authored by Blair Effron
Centerview Partners’ relationship care brings blockbuster deals
from the ''
Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...
''
Rubin to Join Centerview, a Young Firm
''The New York Times'', August 12, 2010

''The Wall Street Journal'', September 21, 2009

''The Wall Street Journal'', May 3, 2007 {{DEFAULTSORT:Effron, Blair 1962 births American bankers American financial businesspeople Columbia Business School alumni Living people Princeton University alumni UBS people