Philly investment banker Greenberg joins NYC firm

Andrew T. Greenberg, one of the more visible faces of Philadelphia investment banking in his 20 years overseeing mergers and acquisitions at Fairmount Partners, the former Commerce Capital Markets, and the Center City office of Brown Brothers Harriman, has joined TM Capital Corp., a New York-based investment bank that claims deals worth more than $20 billion since 1989, for clients including operating firms such as McKesson and investors such as Permira.

Greenberg's "leadership role in many transformative M&A and financing engagements" is "well matched" to TM, its president Jim Grien said in a statement. Among his recent deals for Fairmount, Greenberg worked on the sale of ESL Electroscience to Ferro Corp. for $75 million, and the sale of Telectronics Technology Corp. to CurtissWright for $233 million, which closed in January. 

Private-equity clients like to work with large firms focused on their industries, and that has brought pressure on independent and regional deal-making firms, Greenberg told me — though "competitive firms and practice areas can be located anywhere, and it is still possible for smaller firms to compete in well-defined industry niches."

Indeed, at Fairmount Partners, "this is our biggest year ever," thanks to a team that goes far beyond the mid-Atlantic and has worked deals across the U.S. and in "20 countries," managing partner Charles Robins told me.

"Our revenues in the first quarter alone exceeded all of last year's. All our practice areas are contributing nicely." That includes Robins' technology (software, telecom, advanced materials, devices) practice, Dick Thatcher's and Andy Brown's business and IT services work (with recent clients, Robins says, in "Silicon Valley, Houston, South Africa and Israel"), Jon Smith picking up consumer and industrial clients, and Cornelius P. "Neal" McCarthy — "the world's foremost banker in pharmaceutical outsourcing" — doing health care, which also includes, for example, medical devices.

"We are not regional in our business, though we do favor regional business when we can get it," Robins added. "We get some deal flow because we are the largest independent here and we have a good reputation. A lot of deals get referred to us."

Greenberg is also a partner in GF Data, which has tracked mid-market private-equity-backed company sales since the mid 2000s. Greenberg was Pennsylvania's secretary of commerce (under Gov. Robert P. Casey) from 1991 to '94.