The media-shy mastermind behind an aggressive boutique operation
STJ Advisors operates as a partnership led by John St John, a capital markets banker who has spent 25 years at various investment banks in the capital-raising business.
He co-founded the firm, which was originally known as Fredericks Place Advisors, in 2008, after a career that included stints at Nomura, Citi/Salomon Smith Barney and Dresdner Kleinwort Benson.
STJ focuses exclusively on capital markets deals, in both debt and equity, and makes a point of the “objectivity of our advice”. The bank’s pitch is that it offers “advice and services which the integrated investment banking model cannot provide”.
One former colleague called St John “great to work for”, but others have criticised STJ’s overly “interfering” way of managing book-runners.
STJ is not St John’s first independent capital markets enterprise. In 2000, he left his role in equity capital markets (ECM) at Lehman Brothers to become chief executive of the newly launched EO, an online platform that offered float services. However, the firm went into voluntary liquidation two years later as part of the fallout from the dot.com crash.
In addition to his managing partner role at STJ, St John is also a director of Ingenious Film Partners, one of the backers of the movie Avatar, and is an ambassador for the charity Build Africa.
INDEPENDENT ADVISER
ROTHSCHILD
ROTHSCHILD is one of the world’s largest independent advisories on capital-raisings, having been on 111 deals raising €185bn in equity since 2009. Notable transactions include Petrobras’ $70bn float in Sao Paulo and Porsche’s €5bn rights issue.
Adam Young co-heads its equity advisory service and says that one of the keys to an independent advisor’s role is to manage increasingly large syndicates effectively.
“It’s about lots of little turns of the dial, making sure that the whole thing is done really professionally,” he says. That includes sifting through and filtering information about the market received from book-runners.
Rothschild takes on work both in the early planning stages of a deal and during the execution, prioritising “a detailed flow of information”.
INDEPENDENT ADVISER
LAZARD
LAZARD prides itself on seeing clients as “a client for life”, prioritising relationship-building over generating a constant flow of fees.
The bank has worked on some major capital-raisings this year, such as AIG’s $8.7bn re-listing and the $3.8bn float of HCA Holdings, and its client list includes behemoths such as Kraft and Virgin.
Unlike many large investment banks, Lazard keeps origination of deals and execution of them in one place, so that clients have a consistent relationship and contact point with the bank.
It also pitches that it offers “independent, trusted and unbiased advice”, adding that “we limit our participation in conflicting business activities”.