DE Deere and Co

By Liz Hoffman 

Evercore Partners Inc. is continuing its hiring spree, bringing on a senior banker in New York from Deutsche Bank AG.

The firm plans to add Paul Stefanick, a top industrials banker and until recently the head of Deutsche Bank's Wall Street operations, as a senior executive, Evercore Chief Executive Ralph Schlosstein said.

Mr. Stefanick, who counts Deere & Co. and Honeywell International Inc. among his clients, is Evercore's latest big-name hire as the firm tries to distance itself from the smaller independent advisory shops, known as boutiques, that have crowded Wall Street in recent years.

With 1,500 employees and $1.4 billion in revenue last year, Evercore hardly qualifies for that label anymore.

The firm, founded in 1995 by former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman, late last year hired John S. Weinberg, a former co-head of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s investment bank, as its executive chairman.

Before that, it was Goldman's top activism-defense banker, Bill Anderson, and more recently, Goldman global restructuring chief Roopesh Shah and Ira Wolfson, a Rothschild & Co. aerospace banker.

Mr. Weinberg, who received a pay package worth nearly $100 million in cash and stock upon joining Evercore, has been charged with hiring more star deal-makers.

"This place has a lot of top-tier generalist M&A bankers whose ages start with a six," Mr. Schlosstein said in an interview. Mr. Weinberg and Mr. Stefanick are both in their 50s, and will sit on Evercore's management committee.

Mr. Stefanick was CEO of Deutsche Bank's U.S. business until last fall, when he was shifted full-time to a role courting global clients, one of several recent shake-ups in the German firm's American arm.

A Deutsche Bank spokeswoman couldn't be immediately reached to comment.

Boutique investment banks are finding more opportunities to hire from big Wall Street firms, said Scott Bok, the chief executive officer of Greenhill & Co. earlier this year. Some European banks have cut back, for example, leaving many bankers ready to jump to a new firm.

Evercore's revenue has roughly doubled since 2013. The vast majority comes from merger-and-restructuring advisory work, though it has a small asset-management arm it has been shrinking.

Mr. Stefanick began his career in the M&A group at Merrill Lynch. He worked on Stanley Black & Decker's recent acquisition of the Craftsman tool brand, and his latest deal at Deutsche Bank, Martin Marietta Materials Inc.'s purchase of Bluegrass Materials Co., was announced Monday.

He will start at his new firm after a customary "garden leave."

Write to Liz Hoffman at liz.hoffman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 29, 2017 22:30 ET (02:30 GMT)

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