GLG (Gerson Lehrman Group, Inc.) is a financial and global information services company headquartered in New York City. The company provides financial information and advises investors and consultants with business clients seeking expert advice. It is the world's largest

expert network Expert networks refer to a type of business that connects companies with expert resources or subject-matter experts, such as academics, C-levels, founders, and high-level officials to provide valuable information, data, or assistance. Background ...

, with over 1,000,000 freelance consultants. GLG's experts include asset managers, investors, consultants, physicians, scientists, engineers, lawyers, senior current and former c-level executives, and former government members. GLG's clients include strategy consulting corporations, hedge funds, private equity firms, professional service firms, and non-profit organizations. The firm was founded in 1998 and has been backed by private equity firms

Silver Lake Partners Silver Lake is an American global private equity firm focused on investments in technology, technology-enabled and related industries. Founded in 1999, the firm is one of the largest technology investors in the world. Its investment holdings have ...

Bessemer Venture Partners Bessemer Venture Partners (Bessemer) is an American venture capital firm. The firm has over $19 billion under management and invests globally, with offices in San Francisco, Redwood City, New York City, Boston, Israel, India, and London. Bessemer ...

, and SFW Capital Partners. GLG is headquartered in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, with offices in 22 cities in 12 countries.

History

Gerson Lehrman Group was founded by

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by ''U ...

graduates

Mark Gerson Mark Gerson is an American investor, businessman, and philanthropist. He co-founded the Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) and Thuzio. Gerson is also involved in philanthropic organizations African Mission Healthcare Foundation and United Hatzalah. Ge ...

and Thomas Lehrman in 1998. Alexander Saint-Amand, a former Bloomberg reporter, joined GLG shortly after, and served as CEO until 2018. GLG, initially funded by friends and family, was formed as a

publishing house Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...

to produce industry guidebooks for institutional investors. However, the founders discovered that their clients wanted to talk directly to experts in casual conversations, rather than reading formal written reports. Accordingly, in 1999, GLG abandoned its publishing business and began offering subscriptions to its network of experts. GLG's first customers were investors, and most of their growth from 1999 to 2005 was within the investment community. In 2006, they began working with big strategy consultancies and with companies in life sciences, chemicals and industrials, and technology. By 2010,

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 ...

had described GLG as "dominating the U.S. expert networking industry". The expert network business model has drawn scrutiny for concerns relating to adherence to disclosure rules and

insider trading Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) based on material, nonpublic information about the company. In various countries, some kinds of trading based on insider information ...

within the investment industry. GLG's policies include prohibitions against consultants sharing any nonpublic information about their employer or any public company, violating any ethical or legal restrictions relevant to consultants, or violating any laws. In 2018, GLG named Paul Todd as its new CEO. Todd was previously the head of

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...

's EMEA business. GLG operates a Social Impact Fellowship that provides learning resources and expertise to certain nonprofits at no cost. In October 2021 GLG filed to go public in an IPO, but it withdrew that offerring in March 2022.

References

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History

References

Further reading