Veteran telecoms banker Woody Young is set to join Perella Weinberg from Lazard.
Young will start at Perella as a partner on 4 January 2016 after respecting various contractual obligations to Lazard, according to an internal memo seen by…
Veteran telecoms banker Woody Young is set to join Perella Weinberg from Lazard.
Young will start at Perella as a partner on 4 January 2016 after respecting various contractual obligations to Lazard, according to an internal memo seen by TelecomFinance.
The banker is advising AT&T on its pending US$48.5bn takeover of DTH giant DirecTV, where Lazard acted as sole adviser to AT&T.
He is also advising Frontier Communications on its US$10bn acquisition of network assets from Verizon.
Young has advised on some the biggest US transactions in recent times.
These include: Qwest Communications’ US$22bn sale to CenturyLink; AT&T’s US$89bn merger with BellSouth; Dex Media’s US$10bn sale to R.H. Donnelley; SBC’s US$22bn merger with AT&T; Cingular’s US$41bn merger with AT&T Wireless; Sprint’s ill-fated US$47bn merger with Nextel; and U S West’s US$56bn merger with Qwest Communications.
Prior to Lazard, Young was global head of TMT investment banking at Merrill Lynch. Before that he spent 15 years at Lehman Brothers, where he was a managing director and head of its global communications group.
It is the latest in a string of appointments by Perella, which was formed in 2006.
Last September it added former Goldman Sachs banker Stefan Green as a partner to its TMT advisory team. In June 2014 it recruited Nokia’s former chairman and CEO Jorma Ollila as an advisory partner. And back in 2012 Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon Communications until mid-2011, also joined as an advisory partner.
So far this year Perella was one of BT’s advisers on its US$19bn acquisition of EE and worked with InterXion on its US$2.2bn sale to Telecity.
It has been on a number of significant telecoms deals in recent years, including working with Numericable in connection with its €13.5bn acquisition of French mobile operator SFR from Vivendi and Liberty Global on its €10bn purchase of Dutch cableco Ziggo.
It also advised Kabel Deutschland on its sale to Vodafone, the Principality of Monaco on the sale of Monaco Telecom from Cable & Wireless Communications to Xavier Niel, and Eutelsat’s acquisition of Satmex.
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