Satin's smooth move

Last week, on the same day Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy, Jordan, Edmiston Group Inc. announced Elizabeth Satin as its newest managing director. That Satin hailed from Lehman, where she had spent her entire 19-year career in investment banking, made her job switch appear perfectly timed. Behind that appearance, however, was a courtship lasting years, a long-standing desire to try something new and a decision to exit Lehman last April.

"Wilma and I met years ago while working on the same transaction," Satin says of her new boss, Wilma Jordan, the founder and CEO of JEGI. "We stayed in contact, and she reached out to me most recently during the summer."

Before joining the boutique investment bank, which specializes in media, communications and business information, Satin admits to checking in with "a whole host" of other bulge-bracket escapees. They didn't dissuade her, obviously, but they weren't the key selling point either.

Continue reading below

What really drew the veteran media banker to the middle market was its robustness. "Despite the economy, a lot of clients here remain in growth mode," Satin says of JEGI's customer base. "That makes it a very nice place to be, especially coming from bulge-bracket land where, aside from all the problems making headlines, activity has been way down for a long time."

Not that Satin missed out on much before the credit crunch brought billion-dollar bulge-bracket transactions to a halt. Her deals at Lehman included the leveraged buyouts of Houghton Mifflin Co., Warner Music Group Corp. and Univision Communications Inc., as well as the sales of medical symposium producer M|C Communications LLC to Bain Capital LLC and healthcare-information firm Decision Resources Inc. to Providence Equity Partners Inc.

Satin, 46, expects to use all of that experience at JEGI. "It's all about the same principles: How fast are revenues and cash flow growing, and what's a business' prospects," she says when asked about putting valuations on smaller, mostly private enterprises. The biggest difference, in fact, will be using that experience more often.

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)

Please only click "Post" once. It may take a few moments to process.