Centerview hires the most athletes out of college

Blair Effron, co-founder
of Centerview Partners

Screenshot/CNBC

• Boutique investment bank Centerview Partners employs
  the highest percentage of former varsity athletes than any
  other firm across Wall Street, according to a
  report. 
• Jocks may be drawn to Wall Street’s competitive,
  eat-what-you-kill culture.

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It should come as little surprise that trading floors and banks
are stocked with former athletes.

After all, jocks may be drawn to Wall Street’s competitive,
eat-what-you-kill culture.

But the firm that recruits the most college athletes last year is
not a household name. It’s a small investment bank called
Centerview Partners, according to a new report by Wall Street
Oasis, an online community for financial professionals. An
estimated 28% of employees at Centerview classify themselves as
varsity athletes, the report says. 

Middle market advisory firm Harris Williams & Co. nabbed the
second spot in the ranking and Lazard Middle
Market placed third. 

Wall Street Oasis crunched the data based on user
submissions to its company database from 2016 to
2018. 

New York-based Centerview Partners was founded by star
bankers Blair Effron, Stephen Crawford, and Rob Pruzan in 2006.
It’s often considered the premier boutique bank behind some of
the biggest, most transformational M&A deals in the last
year, including CVS Healthcare’s $69
billion deal for Aetna and Disney’s
agreement to buy $71.3 billion worth of 21st Century
Fox’s assets. 

In the last few weeks, Centerview
served as adviser to music streaming company Pandora on its sale
to satellite radio company SiriusXM.

The bank ranked No. 11 in the league tables for announced global
M&A deals in the first nine months of the year, up from the
No. 20 spot last year, according to data provider
Refinitiv. 

Wall Street has attracted a number of athletes over the years who
have gone on to lead big firms, including former Morgan Stanley
CEO John Mack, who played football at Duke, and Guggenheim
Partners executive chairman Alan Schwartz, who played baseball
also at Duke. 

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