West Coast Provides A Fresh Direction

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West Coast Provides A Fresh Direction
Guggenheim Partner's Peter Comisar.

The Business Journal spotlights local investment bankers who are capitalizing on Wall Street’s chaos.

After spending his entire 20-year career at investment banking titan Goldman Sachs, Peter Comisar last year became a prominent example of the rise of boutique investment houses.

Comisar, 43, jumped to Guggenheim Partners, where he heads West Coast investment banking. It’s a firm that until recently was better known for its money management operation and ties to the famous Guggenheim family.

“With all that was going on with the consolidation of the big banks, I felt there was a unique opportunity to grow a boutique bank like Guggenheim,” Comisar said.

Though the New York firm has only about a dozen bankers in its Santa Monica office, Comisar hopes to grow that number by doing what he has always liked best about investment banking: meeting with top executives bent on growth and scoring deals.

“The idea of sitting in a room with a chief executive as part of a team giving advice has always been exciting to me,” Comisar said. “You really are able to see a lot about how companies work.”

Comisar joined Goldman Sachs right after graduating from Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., with a degree in history and political science. He entered the Wall Street firm’s two-year investment banking training program, and later worked on financing transactions for companies such as Chevron Corp., Boeing Co. and Walt Disney Co.

Then, in 1999, Comisar came to Los Angeles to help build the firm’s West Coast business. He advised on some of the most prominent local deals of the day, including Times Mirror Corp.’s $8 billion sale to Tribune Co. in March 2000 and defense contractor Litton Industries’ sale to Northrop Grumman Corp. the following year.

His most challenging deal was the $17 billion sale in 2006 of Albertson’s Inc. to SuperValu Inc., Cerberus Capital Management and a third company. “It’s very unusual to do a transaction where you have three buyers,” he said.

But it was the financial meltdown of September 2008 that convinced Comisar to look beyond Goldman Sachs. Comisar felt that with so many of the big banks retrenching, there would be room for smaller players to emerge. So, when Guggenheim Executive Chairman Alan Schwartz called with an offer for Comisar to manage the L.A. operations, he jumped.

“So many of the big banks have retrenched their operations back to New York in the last year or so, which makes it a really terrific environment to recruit bankers here and build a business,” he said.

PETER COMISAR, 43

Vice Chairman, head of West Coast investment banking

Guggenheim Partners, Santa Monica

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Howard Fine
Howard Fine is a 23-year veteran of the Los Angeles Business Journal. He covers stories pertaining to healthcare, biomedicine, energy, engineering, construction, and infrastructure. He has won several awards, including Best Body of Work for a single reporter from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers and Distinguished Journalist of the Year from the Society of Professional Journalists.

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