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Wall Street’s “Trump bump” has lifted the value of star dealmaker Paul Taubman’s stake in PJT Partners above $1bn for the first time, as the decade-old boutique positions itself to benefit from an expected post-election surge in corporate activity.
Shares in PJT have risen by almost a tenth since Donald Trump’s re-election earlier this month, as bankers and investors gear up for a burst of dealmaking during the next presidency.
The jump adds to a more than fivefold run-up in the investment bank’s share price since mid-2020, which has taken PJT’s market capitalisation to $7bn as it has established itself as a prime adviser in high-stakes boardroom dramas.
Taubman, who spent nearly 30 years at Morgan Stanley, owns about 15 per cent of the firm’s listed shares — a stake now worth $1.1bn.
PJT has secured a number of blockbuster mandates. In recent weeks, it has advised Boeing on a $24bn equity raising, defended Pfizer from an activist investor campaign and negotiated a delicate debt restructuring underpinning the $23bn combination of DirecTV and Dish Network.
Independent firms free of the constraints that arise from lending capabilities and trading arms have become increasingly popular choices for large corporations since the financial crisis.
At the same time, such boutiques have found new assignments away from the traditional buying and selling of large companies, in defending against shareholder activists, negotiating distressed debt and private capital deals, and structuring private equity funds.
Devin Ryan, an analyst at JMP Securities, wrote in a recent note that PJT “has never been better positioned to deliver revenue growth from here, as its substantial investments in strategic advisory [work] should increasingly pay off as M&A markets recover from currently depressed levels”.
PJT and Taubman declined to comment.
Taubman left Morgan Stanley at the end of 2012 amid a power struggle with Colm Kelleher, another top executive who was similarly a top deputy of the longtime chief executive, James Gorman.
Starting again as a sole practitioner working from a law firm office, Taubman was soon hired by telecoms titans Verizon and Comcast for deals that added up to nearly $200bn of transaction value in 2013 and early 2014.
In late 2014, private equity group Blackstone said it would spin off its small investment banking unit into a new publicly listed firm that Taubman would lead.
Blackstone shareholders received a majority of the shares in the firm that would be called PJT Partners. The Blackstone co-founder Stephen Schwarzman remains the second-largest shareholder in PJT with his stake, which is more than a tenth of the company, and worth over $900mn.
“Paul is a remarkable entrepreneur who has built a world class business around the simple premise that his firm’s reputation is built on his clients’ success,” Schwarzman told the Financial Times.
PJT has more than 100 partners and 1,100 employees. Its annual revenues have almost doubled since 2019, almost hitting $1.4bn for the past 12 months.
Even as the bulk of its bankers are traditional corporate M&A advisers, PJT’s strongest businesses are its corporate restructuring practice and its private capital fundraising advisory division known as Park Hill, both of which came out of Blackstone.
Taubman has taken a modest $1mn base salary since he founded the firm, with the rest of his pay taking the form of long-term stock awards that vest only as PJT’s share price rises.
The stock market performance that has made Taubman a billionaire has also benefited PJT’s rank and file. Securities filings show that median total pay for the firm’s employees rose nearly 60 per cent between 2019 and 2023 to hit $437,000, well ahead of the $300,000 median in 2023 at rival Moelis & Co.
https://www.ft.com/content/4887d9bf-d1cc-4109-972f-7bc0c427cd64
