Thomas Weisel

Thomas Weisel is an entrepreneur and business builder. He has formed two companies: Montgomery Securities and Thomas Weisel Partners, which, over the course of 37 years, helped define the landscape of Silicon Valley and sold for a total of $2.0 billion. Mr. Weisel grew Montgomery Securities into a $700 million revenue company. Montgomery Securities... was known for identifying, researching and financing growth companies. The firm managed IPOs for many significant growth companies in Technology, Healthcare, Consumer, and Financial Services including: Amgen, Micron Technologies, Yahoo, Stratacom, Staples, and Lonestar Steakhouse and Saloon. Montgomery's distinctive competences were its thought leadership, unique ability to make its institutional clients money, the ability to attract the best in class personnel, magnetic growth conferences, and athletic cache. In addition, Montgomery built a $7 billion asset management business that involved three mutual funds that were #1 in performance in various years in the 1990s. In 1997, Mr. Weisel sold Montgomery Securities, including its asset management business, for $1.55 billion , representing 13x value for its investment bank to Nations Bank/Bank of America. In 1999, Mr. Weisel launched Thomas Weisel Partners (TWP), which was backed by several leading venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. In its first full year of operation, TWP produced roughly $500 million in revenue, making it the fastest startup in the history of the financial service industry. Mr. Weisel was named Investment Banker of the Year by Investment Dealers' Digest in 2000. The company completed many important IPOs and M&A transactions including the $44 billion sale of SDL Inc. to JDS Uniphase and Yahoo's $3.5 billion acquisition of GEOCities. Mr. Weisel was named Executive of the Year by the SF Business Times in 1999. He was awarded the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship in 2002. In 2010, Mr. Weisel sold Thomas Weisel Partners to Stifel Financial Company for $450 million, including ...Read More