Sutro Executive Will Step Down to Seek Deals

Lloyd Greif, one of Los Angeles’ most aggressive young corporate deal makers, is stepping down as head of investment banking at Sutro & Co. to focus full time on deal production for the firm.

Sutro is replacing Greif with Stephen A. Koffler, who headed Merrill Lynch & Co.’s emerging growth-company investment banking unit and who last spring engineered financier Roy Disney’s $100-million investment in L.A. Gear Inc.

Under the 36-year-old Greif, Sutro has targeted the huge “middle market” of medium-sized California companies that need merger or acquisition advice, or help in raising capital. The outspoken Greif has argued that those firms often are underserved by New York investment bankers.

Despite Sutro’s efforts, however, its investment banking operations are “break-even” this year, Chairman George McGough admits. Greif, the firm’s top deal maker, said the additional administrative duties of banking chief “took up more time than I was led to believe” when he accepted the post two years ago.

“From a wallet standpoint, I’d rather be concentrating on bringing in production,” he said.

Koffler, 49, has had extensive experience financing middle-market Southland businesses, including Boys Markets, Wherehouse Entertainment and Western Waste. He joined banking firm Warburg Paribas Becker in Los Angeles in 1981 and stayed on when Merrill Lynch bought Warburg in 1984.

But over the past year, Merrill has essentially disbanded Koffler’s department as part of a nationwide corporate downsizing.

Koffler, who has longstanding ties to such Southland financiers as Roy Disney and Leonard Green, now sits on L.A. Gear’s board as part of Disney’s rescue plan for the ailing athletic shoe company.