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There are the guys who decide to retire in their 50s and then there are people like Frederick Joseph, says Bob Hotz, co-chairman and global co-head of corporate finance at Houlihan Lokey, who has been working as an investment banker for several decades and frequently ran into Joseph in airport lounges when they were on the road competing for corporate mandates.
Joseph, former chief executive of Drexel Burnham Lambert and co-founder of Morgan Joseph & Co., died on Friday, Nov. 27. He was 72.
Joseph had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma more than five years ago and he continued working as a managing director at Morgan Joseph until five weeks ago.
A self-described "deal junky," Joseph had a rich career on Wall Street that spanned nearly five decades, echoing those of other dealmakers like Roger Altman, Bob Greenhill and Joseph Perella. His clients included Ted Turner, Steve Wynn and T. Boone Pickens.
Longtime colleagues said some clients became friends because of his unique approach to providing banking advice.
"He was the type of person where you know he's paying attention to what you are saying and interested in what you are saying," says John Sorte, chief executive of Morgan Joseph, a boutique firm Joseph co-founded in 2001. Sorte worked with Joseph off and on since the 1970s at various firms like Drexel Burnham Lambert. "He convinced me to be an investment banker after one-and-a-half hours," Sorte recalls.
Ken Moelis, a veteran banker and founder of his eponymous firm, recalled that Joseph gave him his first job on Wall Street. For Moelis, investment banking, or the corporate finance department as it was known in a different era, was not a first choice as a career. Moelis remembers plans to go on to study law and admits he may have been swayed by Joseph and the climate at Drexel.
"Fred gave me my first shot in life in business," he says. "I sat 25 feet from him. I went to Drexel for one year and thought I was going back to law school. The experience changed me and I ended up staying with banking."
Joseph may have had a private office like other senior managers at Drexel's 55 Broad Street location, Moelis says, but he sat...