James Bainbridge Lee, Jr. (October 30, 1952 – June 17, 2015) was an American
investment banker, notable for his role in the development of the
leveraged finance markets in the U.S. in the 1980s. He is widely credited as the architect of the modern-day
syndicated loan market.
[The New York Public Library Honors James B. Lee, Jr.]
New York Public Library, June 26, 2008 At the time of his death, Lee was vice chairman of
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and a member of the bank's executive committee. He was also Co-Chairman of JPMorgan's investment bank.
Early life
Lee was born on October 30, 1952, in
Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
, New York City. He was educated at the
Canterbury School. He graduated from
Williams College in 1975, where he received a bachelor of arts degree in Economics and Art History.
A trustee of Williams College, the college's snack bar and most recent track and field center is named after him.
Career
Lee joined
Chemical Bank in 1975 and worked in a variety of lending businesses until 1980, when he founded and ran Chemical's merchant bank in Australia. In 1982, he returned to the US and started the bank's syndicated leverage finance group, which constituted the origins of the investment banking business at Chemical and later
Chase Manhattan Bank. Lee ran the investment bank until the merger with
J.P. Morgan & Co. in 2001.
Following Chemical's merger with
Manufacturers Hanover in 1994, Lee founded the bank's
high yield (or
junk bond) business, which was the bank's first public securities operation. At the same time, he built the bank's
financial sponsor coverage business focused on
private equity firms as well as the bank's
mergers and acquisitions business.
By organizing high yield with loan syndications and private equity coverage, and the newly formed M&A group, this led to a variety of market innovations which Chase pioneered. Lee also led the team that resulted in Chase acquiring Hambrecht & Quist which gave the bank its first public equity business and first dedicated technology investment banking practice. He remained active in the technology industry.
In 2000, Lee was effectively demoted in favor of
Geoffrey Boisi but within two years Biosi was out and Lee was again leading investment banking at JP Morgan. By 2007, Lee was placed at the center of a New York Times illustration title "Masters of the New Universe" where he was connected with some of the largest
leveraged buyout transactions of the past decade.
[Masters of the New Universe]
New York Times, April 4, 2007
Lee led the J.P. Morgan teams that executed the $25 billion
Alibaba Group IPO, the largest IPO in history; the $23 billion
General Motors IPO, the second largest U.S. IPO; and the $41 billion common stock sale of the
U.S. Treasury’s ownership of
AIG, resulting from the U.S. Government's bailout of the company. He also led the negotiations with the U.S. Treasury for the
financial restructuring of Chrysler.
Most recently, Lee also advised
Comcast on their announced acquisition of
Time Warner Cable and planned divestitures of systems to Charter (pending),
the Dell Board of Directors Special Committee on the buyout of
Dell by
Michael Dell and
Silver Lake,
[ GE on its $30 billion sale of NBC to Comcast,][ United Airlines in its merger with Continental Airlines, News Corporation on its purchase of Dow Jones,][ was involved in the IPO of The Carlyle Group, and co-led the IPOs of ]Facebook
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
and Twitter.[
Lee was a member of Kappa Beta Phi.
In 2014, Lee testified in American International Group#AIG Bailout Litigation - a lawsuit brought by AIG's shareholder's seeking $40 billion based on claims that the Federal Reserve improperly sought 79.9% of the company's equity in exchange for a bailout in 2009.
]
Death
Lee died on June 17, 2015, unexpectedly after experiencing shortness of breath while exercising. He is survived by his wife Beth and three children.JPMorgan Vice Chairman Jimmy Lee Dead at 62
Bloomberg, June 17, 2015
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, James B., Jr.
1952 births
2015 deaths
American investment bankers
Canterbury School (Connecticut) alumni
JPMorgan Chase people
People from Darien, Connecticut
Private equity and venture capital investors
Williams College alumni