It is the mantra of meetings from the baseball diamond to the boardroom, to six-year-olds and 60-year-olds alike, emblazoned on motivational posters and repeated so often it might slip by a listener who has still somehow not yet learned its value. Eric Gleacher, looking back at his career, from the LBO battlefields of the 1970s and 80s to his firm's merger with Broadpoint Securities, says he learned some of life's most important lessons about teamwork before he even got his MBA. He was a Marine.

"If you've got a rifle platoon of Marines," he tells Mergers & Acquisitions, "You never ask them to do anything you cannot do yourself - whether it's shooting at the rifle range or going up a hill or hiking 50 miles."

Like any Marine worth his salt, he is both experienced and comfortable with traveling. Growing up, he attended ten different schools, including a one-year stay in South America. By the time he was 13, he was playing golf competitively - his knack for the game earned him a scholarship to Western Illinois University. When he transferred to Northwestern University toward the end of his college career, he would continue playing as the captain of the school's team, leading the Wildcats into competition against an Ohio State University golfer named Jack Nicklaus.

At 69, he still hits the links. Gleacher's office, which for now resides in Midtown Manhattan (roughly a seven iron away from Central Park), is littered with trophies and depictions of the greens he has visited. But from the time he arrived in New York, in 1968, his competitive outlet has been M&A. It's a field that accommodates both the teamwork skills he picked up in the Marines and focus he honed on the golf course.

It took Gleacher only five years before he was anointed a partner at Lehman Brothers. He gravitated toward selling companies, but felt challenged at a time when Goldman Sachs had already established its own M&A team and Bob Greenhill was well on his way to doing the same at Morgan Stanley. Lehman did not have an M&A department of its own or even an environment that would foster a successful one.

"Lehman was a cultureless place," Gleacher remembers. "It had great talent; they had great clients; but there was no teamwork."

The sum of its parts could be made into a greater whole, he decided, so Gleacher sought to cobble together a dealmaking unit despite an atmosphere that didn't cater to sharing clients. He also pushed hard to instill a culture of teamwork among his crew.

"My friends said, 'You're nuts,'" Gleacher recalls, but within two years he had Lehman competing with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Martin Lipton, who has been a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz since 1965, came to know Gleacher during the mid-1970s, a period he calls a "watershed" timeframe in which hostile deals gained both notoriety and acceptance.

"He created a team of experts at Lehman," Lipton says. "People became aware of the fact you needed tender-offer experience in M&A."

Ironically, Peter Peterson, the former Lehman Brothers chairman, created a rival M&A group within Lehman Brothers that competed directly with Gleacher's group. Gleacher stayed on for another two years, but in 1983, he jumped to Morgan Stanley.

His relationships went with him. "He has a great ability to relate to his clients," Lipton adds, noting that that ability complements his "genius for deal creation."

He joined Morgan Stanley as a partner, but within three months, he was leading the bank's global M&A group into heady times.

"Part of it was that the market was very strong then," Gleacher says. "The five years that I ran it, the numbers were unbelievable."

By the end of the eighties, Gleacher was yet again ready for a new venture; he had spent 15 years at Lehman and another seven with Morgan Stanley and the LBO business had reached what he felt was its peak at the time.

"I saw [Bruce] Wasserstein start his own boutique," Gleacher recalls, "and I was jealous."

So he followed suit, establishing Gleacher Partners in 1990.

A consummate rainmaker, at his own firm, Gleacher was content to shift gears and focus more on being a manager.

Naturally, some of his colleagues at Morgan Stanley followed. Still, he took little from his former employer; his team during that first year was comprised of 10 people, including the receptionist.

The original thesis behind Gleacher was similar to many boutiques. The firm's website identifies that Gleacher Partners avoids the traditional conflicts of interest that may vex bulge bracket institutions. The firm also commits only senior partners to every aspect of a given transaction.

The revenues topped more than $26 million that first year, and would enjoy similar successes for much of the next decade-and-a-half. The firm was just as comfortable advising on the $40 billion merger that created HBOS or the $22 billion sale of AT&T Communications as it was securing a $140 million recapitalization investment in Wright Medical.

While Gleacher has been a fixture on Wall Street for the past 40 years, his next move unites him with a relative new face on the block. Broadpoint Securities was formed only two years ago, when MatlinPatterson Asset Management took control of First Albany Cos. and rebranded the listed brokerage firm under the Broadpoint banner. The investors installed Lee Fensterstock as the company's new CEO, who in short order, built out Broadpoint's debt origination, fixed income and structured products groups.

Broadpoint had the balance sheet, but it needed the people and ideas, which is where Gleacher comes in. Broadpoint acquired the boutique for $90 million, an offer comprised of $20 million in cash, with the balance of the purchase price in stock.

The need for M&A advice is a hole that Broadpoint wanted to fill in order to take advantage of the buckled bulge bracket. Meanwhile, Gleacher - through adding Broadpoint's capital raising capabilities - now stands out among its boutique peers as it can better help clients find money at a time when financing is in such short supply.

When Mergers & Acquisitions sat down with Gleacher in March, the furor that had erupted over the AIG bonuses had escalated from a simmer to a full-blown kitchen fire. This was not lost on Gleacher, who expects to capitalize on the fact his new firm is beholden to no one except its own partners and its clients.

"People are worried about how they're going to get paid," he says, noting that this is a perfect time to recruit. Moreover, it remains to be seen how government restrictions will hamstring rivals who have taken on TARP funding. Either way, Gleacher knows his new firm is better off without populist motives guiding activity.

The old days, even for Gleacher, are separated by Lehman Brothers' Sept. 15, 2008 collapse. "World Number One," as he calls it, saw a half-dozen investment banks run an oligopoly that enjoyed little oversight and contained few obstacles from the outside world. "Now we're in World Number Two," he says, characterized by legislators who dictate the rules, and mega-institutions that will have trouble adapting to the new environs.

Gleacher says he watched the financial crisis of the last eighteen months unfold with discomfort; he counts Morgan Stanley CEO and chairman John Mack among his friends and says he and former Lehman head Dick Fuld got their respective starts together at the now bankrupt investment bank.

"I don't wish that on anybody," he insists, reflecting on the fates of his competitors. "It's no fun to watch that. But, I have to say, in each case, they made some big mistakes. It wasn't like it was a bad break that happened to them that they didn't deserve."

Gleacher has seen opportunities since before even the days of the fax machine, before Bloomberg terminals littered investment banks, and before, he points out to his interviewers, the acronym "M&A" became a commonplace abbreviation to the profession for which he will be remembered.

So while he takes no joy in seeing Wall Street crumble, he's not one to ignore an opening either. "I just see a giant opportunity," he says of his new firm and the role he hopes it fills in rebuilding Wall Street.

And his peers are not surprised. "However this market turns, Eric will find opportunities," Lipton says.

(c) 2009 Mergers & Acquisitions, The Dealmaker's Journal and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.mergersunleashed.com http://www.sourcemedia.com/