He’s a man who has been heavily involved in disastrous banking mergers.
Bespectacled, married, in his late 40s and drives a Maserati.
[One unhappy client] now refers to him as the ELF, which does not stand for Erudite Likeable Fellow.
Just who is being profiled in this unflattering Evening Standard piece?
SlackBelly thinks it’s Matthew Greenburgh of Merrills:
While I can’t be sure – and several candidates suggest themselves – the clever money is on Matthew Greenburgh at Merrill Lynch. Greenburgh himself is the opposite of clever money, having advised Sir Fred on ABN Amro and Eric Daniels on HBOS.
Now there’s obviously no way to be sure it’s Greenburgh, though the similarities are certainly there. As noted, Greenburgh advised Sir Fred on ABN/RBS and Daniels on Halifax/BoS. So we’re well on course for involvement in “disastrous banking mergers” (note the plural).
He also, of course, did NatWest/RBS back in 2000. And who could forget Citizens at £5.9bn for RBS more recently? Beyond the banks, Greenburgh advised on the flotation of Standard Life, and helped Dame Clara fend off bidders for the LSE.
And to top it off, Mr Greenburgh wears glasses, trousered a sizeable bonus last year (rumoured at around £11m), and having been born in 1961, is indeed, in his late 40s.
Oh – and he drives a Maserati.
But we here at FT Alphaville want to stress that whoever the Standard’s profile is of (fellow M&A Maserati owners, we’re looking at you), it’s really somewhat unfair to single them out.
The bottom line is that M&A advisory really was not the seedbed of this crisis.