CSFB Banks on Maron to Make Operation Among Best in West

Mark S. Maron knows how to close a deal.

Part of a team at Credit Suisse First Boston Corp. that put together some of the biggest banking deals ever, including the $9.9-billion sale of H.F. Ahmanson to Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo’s $11.6-billion acquisition of First Interstate, Maron is viewed by colleagues as a fierce negotiator who helped drive the consolidation of the financial industry.

Now, as newly promoted chief of the Western region for CSFB, one of the nation’s largest investment banks, Maron will need to tap those skills to meld a revamped team in the Los Angeles office, which recently suffered a management shake-up. As CSFB continues its drive to rival the top three investment banks worldwide, Maron is attempting to make its Western region the powerhouse he thinks it should be.

“The staff is here,” Maron said. “We want to leverage off the successful base we’ve built already. It’s now a matter of increasing the amount of companies we provide investment banking services to.”

Maron hopes his office will do more equity offerings, high-yield deals, merger consulting and investment-grade debt transactions, especially for mid-sized companies.

“With the talent we have in this office now, we believe we can represent our clients’ interests in a manner second to nobody,” Maron said.

Among the changes this year was the departure of Peter G. Allen, who was hired in late 1998 to co-head the office with Robert J. Levitt. Allen left in June to start, along with three others, Haven Partners, a boutique investment bank focusing on Internet companies. Levitt recently resigned as co-head to return to deal-making at CSFB. Last month, the office lost another L.A. veteran when Robert Thornton, who ran the merger and acquisition division, left to head Lehman Bros.’ merger practice in San Francisco, focusing primarily on technology.

This summer, CSFB turned to a 15-year veteran of the Los Angeles office when it tapped Maron, 43, to head the division.

While Maron is a well-known deal maker, the sudden changes at CSFB in Los Angeles have some in the local financial community questioning the regional office’s direction.

“They don’t have a focused reputation in Los Angeles,” said one investment banker who competes with the firm here. “They come from a blue-chip background, a big New York investment bank. Are they working on Oxy [Occidental Petroleum], a studio deal or what? It’s unfocused.”

Maron disagrees, saying that having an office with bankers who can shift gears to work with diverse types of companies--along with specialists here and in New York and Palo Alto--makes the firm stronger.

Indeed, the Western region has had a big year, with such deals as a $250-million debt offering for Nordstrom Inc., $1.5-billion in debt offerings for Safeway Inc. and a $350-million high-yield deal for Dallas-based Hollywood Casino Corp., as well as an advisory role on the proposed $1-billion sale of Newport Beach-based Western Bancorp to Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp.

While important, Maron’s Western region is a small part of the firm’s global operations. CSFB has more than 14,000 employees, $326 billion in assets and more than 40 offices in 30 countries. Only 24 employees are based in Los Angeles.

Though it ranks behind such top-tier firms as Merrill Lynch & Co., Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in assets under management, the firm is seen as one of the more successful combinations of a commercial bank and investment banking firm.

“They are really the only example of a successful merger between the two--and it’s taken years to do it,” said Samuel Hayes, a professor of investment banking at Harvard. “They are in the top six [investment banking] firms worldwide.”

CSFB, formed by the 1988 merger of European banking giant Credit Suisse and U.S.-based First Boston, ranks fourth among global investment banks worldwide in merger activity this year, at $483 billion in deal value through Wednesday, according to Thomson Financial Securities Data. In one of its biggest deals, CSFB advised Ascend Communications when it was bought by Lucent Technologies for $24 billion.

CSFB has also lead-managed the largest number of initial public offerings by companies nationwide (48) and in California (24), according to Securities Data.

Many of its IPOs were led by CSFB’s flamboyant investment banker Frank Quattrone and his team in the firm’s technology division in Palo Alto. In IPO stock performance, CSFB ranks second nationwide, with its IPOs gaining an average of 282% this year from the offer price, according to Securities Data.

CSFB’s major IPOs include the $164-million offering for Los Angeles-based Korn/Ferry International, up 56% in 1999; the $80.5-million deal for Santa Clara-based Autoweb.com, down nearly 40% for the year; and the $117-million deal for Santa Clara-based InterTrust Technologies Corp., up about 400% for the year. But its biggest winner, based on stock performance, was the $64-million IPO for Phone.com, a Redwood City, Calif.-based firm that is up 1,581% on this year’s telecom surge.

Though Maron notes that Los Angeles is home to an increasing number of technology firms, he said bankers in the L.A. office will continue to feed tech deals to Quattrone and his team because of their reputation and expertise.

“Our business is a global one. We send people wherever a company is, whether it’s Boston, Seattle or Los Angeles,” said Quattrone, 44, who joined CSFB with his team of more than 100 in July 1998 from Deutsche Bank. Quattrone had spent more than a decade with Morgan Stanley.

“We think we’ve got the best of all worlds at CSFB,” Quattrone said. “We’ve got a global platform, and they are allowing us to run our business in an entrepreneurial way.”

New to the L.A. regional office are Robert D. Bertagna, formerly of CSFB in New York, who will replace Thornton as head of mergers, and M. Mark Albert, who joined the firm in October from Bear Stearns & Co. in Los Angeles. Albert, who like many local investment bankers once worked at now-defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert, will use his contacts to direct CSFB’s alliances with leveraged buyout firms and venture capitalists.

Maron’s energy--the former kick boxer now coaches soccer for his four daughters--and his focus on accountability among bankers have inspired colleagues.

“A number of us have come together in the past few months, Albert said. “It was Mark who convinced me to give up what I had built up at Bear Stearns to come here. We think the chemistry will work.”

Other key bankers in the Los Angeles office include Michael Hartmeier, a director who specializes in high-yield financings for the gaming industry and works with some of the area’s largest companies, such as Mattel Inc. Steven Hellman, a vice president, works with retail, oil and gas, and technology companies. The firm has 16 bankers in Los Angeles.

Like most large Wall Street firms, CSFB bases most of its investment banking and merger specialists at its New York headquarters. The industry has typically treated L.A. as a satellite office, staffing up when the economy is good and making cutbacks when business slows down.

But for now, the flow of business continues to be strong, Maron said, noting that New York is committed to ramping up the Western region and that he is hiring.

Times staff writer Debora Vrana can be reached by e-mail at debora.vrana@latimes.com.