Move over Milken, Mellon Evans Was First

All right children, who can tell me who pioneered the LBO? Michael Milken? Carl Icahn? Ivan Boesky? You’re all wrong. At least according to the newly published The White Sharks of Wall Street: Thomas Mellon Evans and the Original Corporate Raiders, that is. Mergers & Acquisitions Report spoke with author Diana Henriques, a business reporter with The New York Times, who discussed how today’s M&A activity echoes that of nearly a half century ago. During the 1950s, Evans and other raiders found themselves in a fragmented, post-war market where investors still had the jitters from the Great Depression. Risking the scorn of more conservative financiers, Evans proceeded to acquire more than 80 companies in a relatively rash and cold-hearted fashion, making the financial betterment of a company’s shareholders his only concern and providing prototypes for the LBOs that took new life in the ’80s.