New Business

Our mission:

A Bulge Bracket investment bank decided to create a business development function to help them build client facing "portals". They recognized that their customers wanted a data rich interface and secure trading portal but they also wanted a low cost trading interface. The challenge was to acquire the appropriate "content" at low cost and, when possible leverage the technology spend from a pure expense into a capital investment.

The role required a combination of deal skills, product knowledge and technology savvy not resident within most investment banks.

The difficulty of the assignment was to find someone who could transfer knowledge and skills to the industry. We first examined online brokers, and technology companies and the major market data companies but were relatively unimpressed with the deal making skills of their business development executives. While they possessed good understanding of products and technology they had a somewhat narrow view of the overall value chain.

Results:

We recruited a business development executive from one of major television networks who had been responsible for negotiating joint ventures and alliances that combined the content offered by his employer with the technology expertise of its partners to create new distribution channels and business models.