Frank Quattrone's Comeback
Corrected: After a five-year legal saga – in which he lost his job as one of Silicon Valley’s top investment bankers, was convicted of obstruction of justice on charges that he hindered an investigation into whether hedge funds were paying excess commissions to Credit Suisse First Boston, and then won on appeal over defective jury instructions – Frank Quattrone is staging a comeback.
Now 52 and bankrolled by what remains of the $300 million or so he has made since 1998, the former head of Credit Suisse First Boston Corp.’s technology banking group, Quattrone has returned to investment banking, reports Bloomberg in a lengthy article about the onetime venture capital king. But rather than seeking to rebuild the mighty IPO machine that he once ran, this time Quattrone plans to offer advice to others in his wide network of business connections.
Few have fallen from such heights, and it remains to be seen, even after federal prosecutors dropped their case against Quattrone after his successful appeal in 2004, how much of his former clout he can regain.
“He beat the legal rap. But on Wall Street, all you really have is your reputation, and he took a hit to his,” says analyst Andy Kessler, a colleague of Quattrone’s at Morgan Stanley in the 1980s and who was a co-founder of the Velocity Capital Management hedge fund firm. “He’s going to have to dig himself out of that, and maybe he will, and maybe he won’t.”
Corrected on August 25 at 4:26 p.m. to note Quattrone’s conviction was on charges that he hindered an investigation into whether hedge funds were paying excess commissions to Credit Suisse First Boston, and that Kessler was a co-founder of Velocity Capital Management.
