Robert F. Greenhill (born 1936) is an American businessman, widely credited with helping pioneer the modern mergers and acquisitions advisory business on Wall Street.[1][2] He is the founder and chairman of Greenhill & Co., an investment bank headquartered in New York City[1][3][4][5] that has advised on $3 trillion worth of transactions and operates in 17 offices globally. In May 2023, Japanese conglomerate Mizuho acquired Greenhill &Co. for $550 million in an all cash transaction.[6]
Early life and education
Greenhill was born in 1936 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.[7] He graduated from Yale University in 1958 with a BA in Philosophy, and he received an MBA from the Harvard Business School (HBS) in 1962, where he was a Baker Scholar.[2]
Career
He joined investment bank Morgan Stanley in 1962 and became a partner in 1970.[1][3] In 1972, he was appointed by Frank Petito, then Chairman of Morgan Stanley, to create and direct the new mergers and acquisitions department, the first of its kind on Wall Street. During this time, he was credited with pioneering the modern investment banking analyst program.[1][3][5] In the 1980s, he served on the investment banks' management committee, then, from January 1989 to January 1999, he was its Vice Chairman. From January 1991 to June 1993, he was President.[1][3]
Personal life
Robert was married to Gayle (nee Gussett) Greenhill in September 1958 in her hometown of Des Moines, Iowa and they remained married until her death on October 12, 2017.[5][10] They moved to Boston when Robert attended HBS and then in 1962, moved to New York which became their home town as Robert started his career on Wall Street. They had three children, and instilled into the family their sense of adventure. In 1975, the two were dropped together with four others by an airplane at the Arctic Circle to spend a month traveling north with three canoes for 500 miles without guides from Beechey Lake in Nunavut, Canada on the Back river through to the Arctic Ocean. That trip made them subjects of a DuPont advertisement in 1977 touting Kevlar-skinned canoes. They later took their children on similar trips to the far north. In addition, Robert had a pilot's license with more than 15,000 hours logged in command over 20 years, flying all over the world, often accompanied by his wife, who eventually got her own pilot’s license at age 50.[11]
They were both very involved with the