New York-based investment bank the Cowen Group has hired Michael Costa as head of its M&A group and vice chairman of investment banking.
A media and telecommunications banker, Costa was a senior deal-maker at Merrill Lynch until September 2008. He will…
New York-based investment bank the Cowen Group has hired Michael Costa as head of its M&A group and vice chairman of investment banking.
A media and telecommunications banker, Costa was a senior deal-maker at Merrill Lynch until September 2008. He will report to Scott Ryles, the firm’s head of investment banking.
Costa was involved in some of the biggest media deals over the last two decades at Merrill Lynch, including advising the Bancroft family in the sale of Dow Jones & Company to the News Corporation and the Tribune Company in its sale to the billionaire investor Samuel Zell. Before joining Merrill, Costa was a lawyer at the firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
Cowen, originally formed in 1918 as a bond-trading house, entered investment banking in the 1990s. It was acquired by France’s Societe Generale in 1998, where it remained until 2006, when it was spun-off in an IPO. The firm grew significantly after its merger with Ramius, a hedge fund last year and specialises in the healthcare, TMT, consumer and aerospace & defence sectors.
