By Niket Nishant and Lananh Nguyen (Reuters) -Ken Moelis will step down as CEO of the investment bank he co-founded, Moelis & Co., and hand the reins to longtime partner Navid Mahmoodzadegan, the bank said in a statement on Monday. Moelis will become executive chair on October 1. The move echoes a playbook from rival […]
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Ken Moelis to hand CEO role to longtime partner at investment bank
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By Niket Nishant and Lananh Nguyen
(Reuters) -Ken Moelis will step down as CEO of the investment bank he co-founded, Moelis & Co., and hand the reins to longtime partner Navid Mahmoodzadegan, the bank said in a statement on Monday.
Moelis will become executive chair on October 1. The move echoes a playbook from rival Wall Street banks in recent years, including Morgan Stanley and Lazard, in which outgoing CEOs stay on for a period to smooth the transition. Moelis co-founder and Co-President Jeff Raich will become executive vice chair.
The succession is a major step for a bank that has been led solely by Moelis since its founding in 2007. Over a career spanning more than four decades, the veteran dealmaker is one of the most prominent names in finance. He was once a banker to U.S. President Donald Trump and was a senior executive at UBS.
Moelis is part of a cohort of independent investment banks founded by star bankers who struck out on their own and built firms that eventually went public. It is among a group of boutique banks that mainly offer deal advice, contrasting with universal banks that offer broader services, including lending, trading, and consumer banking.
Moelis was paid $16 million for 2024, compared with $9 million for 2023, according to proxy filings.
Succession at companies closely tied to founding CEOs can be tricky because of their personal influence. But Moelis expects to pull off the “smoothest transition ever in the history of Wall Street,” he told the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the move.
“This is the right moment to elevate the next generation of leadership and create further opportunities for internal growth,” he said in the statement.
CEO-designate Mahmoodzadegan is the bank’s co-founder and currently serves as its Co-President. Between 2001 and 2007, he was the global head of media investment banking at UBS. The Harvard graduate also worked as an attorney before becoming an investment banker.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru and Lananh Nguyen in New York; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar, Anil D’silva and Rod Nickel)