Keith R. Harris
 |
Keith R Harris
Keith Harris | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1955 |
| Education | Phd in Economics |
| Occupation | Financier |
| Employer | Seymour Pierce |
Keith R. Harris
Keith Harris is a London-based investment banker and financier with a 25-year career as a senior corporate finance and takeover advisor. He is a private equity investor that owns stakes in various business, including investment bank, Seymour Pierce, and other varied holdings in sport and media.
Background
In senior positions at leading global banks Harris has advised on hundreds of debt and equity issues and complex cross border transactions, as well as acting for noteworthy clients and high profile transactions like the £13.5bn hostile bid for British American Tobacco by Kerry Packer, Sir James Goldsmith and Lord Rothschild, and continues to act for several high net worth families from the Middle East, Russia and India on media and sport related acquisitions.
He became Executive Chairman of Seymour Pierce beginning in 2003 when he led a management group that acquired the UK investment bank. Seymour Pierce is the number one ranked investment bank in London for LSE AIM listed companies [1] and the bank is the leading strategic financial adviser to top-level professional soccer teams, advising on dozens of acquisitions, including Chelsea, Aston Villa, Manchester City, Newcastle and West Ham.
Prior to Seymour Pierce, Dr. Harris was recruited by Sir William Purves, then Chairman of HSBC Group, as global Chief Executive of HSBC Investment Bank PLC where he served from 1994 to 1999. At HSBC, Harris oversaw a staff of approximately 13,500 in forty-six countries. Under his leadership, HSBC Investment Bank achieved an average annual return on equity of more than 20% with over 30% in some years.[2]
Prior to HSBC, Harris was President of Morgan Grenfell Inc. (now owned by Deutsche Bank) and was the youngest ever director at the bank, then departing to head of international investment banking at Drexel Burnham Lambert, and from 1990 to 1994 he was Chief Executive of Apax Partners Worldwide LLP (formerly known as Apax Partners Ltd.), the global private equity investment group.
He also has been active in the insurance sector, serving since 1999 as a non-executive director of Benfield Group Plc., a reinsurance intermediary and capital advisory business, until its acquisition by Aon Re Global in 2009 (NYSE: AON). Since 2009, he has been a director of Cooper Gay Swett & Crawford, one of the world's largest privately owned insurance and reinsurance brokers, headquartered in the City of London.[3]
Seymour Pierce
Seymour Pierce is the number one ranked investment bank in London for LSE AIM listed companies.[4] Seymour Pierce is a registered Nominated Advisor, or NOMAD, with authority delegated by the London Stock Exchange to regulate and supervise companies admitted to trade publicly on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) segment of the LSE. Seymour Pierce is the primary regulatory for approximately 80 public companies.
Seymour Pierce has advised on several recent high-profile deals, including the flotation of Super Group, ranked as one of the best-performing initial public offerings in London in 2010. Seymour Pierce was the sole bookrunner in raising £125 million in new equity. As of April 2011, Super Group is over 300% up on its 2010 IPO price. Institutional demand for shares came almost entirely from UK-based investors.
Seymour Pierce was also the banker on the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation PLC, of the Republic of Kazakhstan, £584 million acquisition of Central African Mining last year, the Financial Times reported.
In 2010, Seymour Pierce was joint book runner on the successful $750 million placement for Energy XXI, the NASDAQ listed oil and gas company.
Seymour Pierce Limited traces is its history to 1803 and its origins on the London Stock Exchange to 1845. The bank came to dominate the stockbroking market for decades for water utilities achieving greater than ninety percent market shares.
In 1987, Seymour Pierce was acquired by Bank Butterfields as the bank’s entry to the London markets. The Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son was founded as Bermuda’s first bank in 1858 and is currently owned by the Carlyle Group, the American private equity business. Nine years after acquisition, AIM-listed Talisman House persuaded Butterfields to dispose of its London investment bank and Seymour Pierce was acquired by Talisman in 1996.
Seymour Pierce Group (f/k/a Talisman House plc) came to have operations in investment banking through Seymour Pierce Limited and Seymour Pierce Ellis, as well as asset management with £3.0 billion assets under management. In 2003, management organized the buyout of Seymour Pierce Limited, Seymour Pierce Ellis and the asset management operations. The transaction was institutionally supported by Alchemy Partners, the UK private equity house.
Subsequent to the MBO, management successfully reorganized Seymour Pierce by disposing of £3.0 billion asset management operations to New Star for cash and disposing of Seymour Pierce Ellis (the former Ellis and Partners) to Dowgate for cash.
A business combination with an American stockbroking firm was considered in 2007, which was reported in the financial press. The merger was not pursued. Management also rejected acquisition alternatives that would have resulted in Seymour Pierce becoming a subsidiary of a large international banking group, an undesirable result for existing management.
In December 2010, Seymour Pierce had announced a merger with New York Stock Exchange listed Gerova Financial Group. In February 2011, after due diligence the merger was called off by Seymour Pierce.
The bank is the leading strategic financial adviser to top-level professional soccer teams, advising on dozens of acquisitions, including Chelsea, Aston Villa, Manchester City, Newcastle and West Ham.
Sports and Entertainment
At Seymour Pierce, Harris established himself as the leading strategic financial adviser to top-level professional soccer teams, advising on dozens of acquisitions.
He was also a Director of Wembley National Stadium Ltd. from January 2001 to September 2007. Wembley has been the home of English football since 1923, the new Wembley Stadium opened in Spring 2007 and quickly reestablished itself as the country’s leading venue for sports and entertainment events. Wembley Stadium plays host to The FA’s flagship events including all senior England home internationals, The FA Cup Final and Semi Finals, The Community Shield and The FA Carlsberg Vase and Trophy Finals.
From August 2000 to August 2002, he served as Chairman of The Football League Ltd. Formed in 1888, The Football League is the world's original league football competition.
According to Duncan White of The Sunday Telegraph, Keith Harris is arguably "the most influential man in British football." Harris, the 55-year-old chairman of investment bank Seymour Pierce, is the dealmaker behind the Premier League's biggest takeovers.
As "happy chatting to his good mate Terry Venables as he is swapping canapés with City blue bloods", says Andrew Davidson in The Times, Harris welcomed Roman Abramovich at Chelsea Village, ushered Randy Lerner into Villa Park, and handled Thaksin Shinawatra's purchase of Manchester City and the takeover of West Ham by Eggert Magnusson. Mike Ashley recently charged him with handling the sale of Newcastle United and Bill Kenwright has asked him to find a billionaire buyer for Everton Football Club.
Clients
Harris has been publicly associated with a number of high net worth clients. These include Roman Ambramovich of Russia, former Prime Minister Shinawatra of Thailand and Mohamed Fayed,[5] owner of Fulham football club and former owner of Harrods (sold to Qatari investors).
He has significant media contacts. Harris is reportedly close to UK billionaire media figure Richard Desmond. Harris advised Desmond on the £125 million acquisition of the Express Group, the media company that publishes the Daily and Sunday Express newspaper.[6]
He represented American billionaire, Randy Lerner, in the acquisition of Aston Villa football club, one of the oldest clubs in the world. Lerner is also the owner of the Cleveland Browns whose fortune was originally derived from the MBNA banking group. It was a letter from William McGregor, a Director at Aston Villa, to four other clubs on March 2, 1888, which led to the formation of the world's first league football competition.
In 2010, he advised an unnamed Middle Eastern client on the attempted acquisition of Liverpool football club. [7] He has acted for several other Middle Eastern clients from several countries in the region. He is believed to have developed many of his Middle East contacts whilst CEO of HSBC Investment Bank. The bank has long roots in the region, having acquired The British Bank of the Middle East in 1959 (now called HSBC Bank Middle East Limited) which was established in London in September 1889 originally as the Imperial Bank of Persia.
Red Knights
Mr Harris, a life long Manchester United fan, was a member of the Red Knights consortium of financiers that wanted to buy the club from the Glazer family, a controversial American owner of the football club.
In 2010, a cabal of Britain’s leading businessmen calling themselves the Red Knights met at the offices of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, the law firm, to plot a way to make the dream of every Manchester United fan come true, by getting rid of Malcolm Glazer, the club’s reviled owner.
The leading figures of the Red Knights are Jim O'Neill, a former HSBC investment bank chief executive and chief economist at Goldman Sachs; Seymour Pierce's Keith Harris; Paul Marshall, a partner at the hedge fund Marshall Wace; Richard Hytner of advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi and lawyer Mark Rawlinson, a partner in Freshfields' corporate practice, who advised United during the Glazer takeover negotiations.[8]
Self-professed United fan Harris, the man brokering the potential takeover, claims the group want "to do something for the good of Manchester United and the good of football." In the past, he has been involved in the takeovers of West Ham, Manchester City and Aston Villa, but last year, he correctly predicted that football's finances were set for a crash, and has been extremely critical of the debt-burden the Glazers have brought to Old Trafford.
Education
Dr. Harris obtained his Doctorate in Economics in 1977 and embarked on a career in investment banking.
References
Financial Times http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e82c5196-2c9a-11e0-83bd-00144feab49a.html#axzz1Jjl2RK7C