How the other half banks

It's not only steeped in debt analysis, particularly the high-yield kind, but includes enough equity coverage to give Bourkoff -- whose first name is pronounced R-E-A -- what he calls "a full capital-structure perspective."

This perspective is so rare that in 2005, Bourkoff became the first analyst covering technology, media and telecom companies to cop top spots in Institutional Investor's annual surveys for equity, fixed-income and hedge-fund research. The perspective has also kept him busy after leaving UBS' research department two years ago to become vice chairman of technology, media and telecommunications investment banking.

"The CEOs of traditional media companies were finally recognizing they had formidable competition in the online world," Bourkoff, 36, says of the timing of his transition to banker. "This opened the dialogue they were having with their senior advisers about how traditional media should evolve."

By then, having spent 12 years as analyst (including four at CIBC World Markets Corp. before joining UBS in 1999), Bourkoff had researched 60 of those traditional media companies. It was time well spent, even for a banker, mostly because the interest of CEOs was extending far beyond what deals were pitched.

"They wanted advisers who knew how their businesses actually worked," Bourkoff says. "They were also very interested in the most effective use of their capital -- whether it was debt, equity or acquisitions -- and those were things I had already picked up from the research side."

About half of Bourkoff's universe is even more interested in those subjects now than it was then. It's the half currently confronting or contemplating a restructuring, the banker explains, and often consists of "those who rode the LBO wave and now have balance sheets in need of being right-sized."

The other half of the banker's universe qualifies as one of the recession's best-kept secrets. "Relative to where they were in previous cycles, the largest media companies have balance sheets that are in great shape," says Bourkoff, who advises doubters to examine the most recent financials of such stalwarts as AT&T Inc., Comcast Corp., Walt Disney Co., News Corp. and Time Warner Inc.

In one case, with Bourkoff playing an active part, his half-universe of "haves" has already come to terms with his half-universe of "have nots." These were the terms that, at the last minute, saved Sirius XM Radio Inc. from bankruptcy through a capital infusion from Liberty Media Corp.

The terms also left Liberty, Bourkoff's client, with preferred shares convertible into 40% of Sirius' common stock.

"You will definitely see more creative deals like that -- marriages between basically good companies with a lot of debt and strategically interested partners with healthy balance sheets," the banker says. And he says it with such conviction one's left wondering why predecessor Jeff Sine recently left UBS after eight years as its global head of TMT.