Morgan Schiff & Co.

Morgan Schiff & Company

Type	Private Partnership
Industry	Investment Banking, Private Equity
Founded	1984
Founder(s)	Phillip Ean Cohen
Headquarters	New York City, San Francisco, Melbourne
Key people	Phillip Ean Cohen, Founder and Chairman Sterling Brinkley, Senior Partner
Revenue	USD 550 million (1986 )[1]

Morgan Schiff & Co. was an investment house founded by Phillip Ean Cohen which was a prominent Mergers and Acquisitions and Private Equity firm from its founding in the mid 1980s to the late 1990s. The firm was discontinued after the bankruptcy of Friedman's Inc., the largest jewelry bankruptcy of all time.

The firm was named after Jacob Schiff and J.P. Morgan although the firm had no affiliation with either individual.

Corporate Advisory

After a power struggle with Jeff Beck, Phil Cohen left Oppenheimer & Co. to start his own firm. Cohen was offered $2 billion from Michael Milken, but refused. The firm is named after family names of two of the greatest bankers on wall street; when Business Week asked Cohen about the name he replied, "It was my belief that investment banks should go back to advising clients in a closer format, as in the days of JP Morgan and Jacob Schiff. Cohen was considered one of the top minds in Mergers and Acquisitions, and was able to recruit many of his corporate clients from his days at Kuhn Loeb, Lehman Brothers, First Boston, Oppenheimer, and Drexel Burnham Lambert.^[2] One of these clients was Zale Corporation, which used Morgan Schiff as an adviser on a $500 million Merger, officially becoming the company's first transaction. In 1986, despite only having 12 employees and just two partners, Morgan Schiff was one of the 50 largest Mergers and Acquisitions firms in the world^[1] In 1986 Cohen recruited the first outside partner, Sterling Brinkley, a Merger's specialist whom Cohen met at Kuhn Loeb. In the mid 1980s Brinkley and the President of Lehman Brothers went to start up the San Francisco office. While there Brinkley tried to engage in a massive deal with Safeway, but was caught and fired.

Downfall

Though Brinkley, Cohen, and Jaroszewicz still invest with each other, they no longer do so under the name Morgan Schiff. Brinkley and Cohen had put Brad Stinn in charge of Friedman's Inc., one of their largest portfolio companies. Stinn, captain of his Harvard University Football team, thrived under the intense goals which Morgan Schiff placed on him and Friedman's. Friedman's grew into the nations third largest jeweler, had dominated its middle-income demographic, and was growing at a fast rate. By 2000, Brinkley and Cohen were so confident in Brad's work that they essentially stopped looking into how he was running the company. Starting in about 2000, Stinn started lying about the liquidity of the loans which Friedman's offered to its customers, thereby artificially inflating the share price on the New York Stock Exchange. Stinn and Friedman's CFO were caught and given jail time. After the fiasco Morgan Schiff lost its trading license, and Cohen decided to shut down the firm. Brinkley, Cohen, and Jaroszewicz continue to own and operate Morgan Schiff's largest investments under an anonymous firm name, and still own Morgan Schiff's Park Avenue Office.

Portfolio Companies/ Clients

Zale Corporation
Friedman's Inc.
EZCorp
Crescent Jewelers
Farmer's Journal - http://agweb.com/FarmJournal/default.aspx
AgWeb - http://agweb.com/
Petro - http://www.petro.com/
Tab Products- [1]
Hamilton Sorter - http://www.hamiltonsorter.com/
Pietrefesa Corporation
Telecom Corporation
Rthport
Cherry Tree
Maxcell- http://www.maxcellinnerduct.com/
Triboro
AMC Theaters

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  Jacob Schiff

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  J.P. Morgan

Sources

1. ^ ^{a b} http://books.google.com/books?id=6MnzYrLerlwC&pg=PA223&dq=%22morgan+schiff%22&lr=&ei=F_yFSqr7BZXszASbpIzhDQ&client=firefox-a#v=onepage&q=%22morgan%20schiff%22&f=false
2. ^ Rainmaker, Jeff Beck, Page 148